Cauldron
by Catharsiss-BridgetteHayden
Summary: After the war, Harry is damaged and left with heightened sensitivity that limits his ability to socialize. Encouraged back into society by Severus Snape, the two work together to investigate paranormal crimes and bring closure to cases too strange for both the Muggle world and the Wizarding one. When they are given the case of a large, deadly cauldron, in which victims are found d
1. Cauldron-House Call

Summary: After the war, Harry is damaged and left with heightened sensitivity that limits his ability to socialize. Encouraged back into society by Severus Snape, the two work together to investigate paranormal crimes and bring closure to cases too strange for both the Muggle world and the Wizarding one. When they are given the case of a large, deadly cauldron, in which victims are found drowned inside, both are tested by unholy forces surrounding it. AU, (Basically, a good 'ol fashioned ghost story with unexpected love/lust thrown in. Happy Halloween!).

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WARNINGS: Mature themes/Non-con/Rape/Spooky Snarry, Slash, AU, Ghost, Mentions of Het, OC!

WARNINGS: Mature themes/Non-con/Rape/Spooky Snarry, Slash, AU, Ghost, Mentions of Het, OC!

WARNINGS: Mature themes/Non-con/Rape/Spooky Snarry, Slash, AU, Ghost, Mentions of Het, OC!

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This was a request from Vivian L. It's based on a picture of Ricky Whittle - Shadow Moon (American Gods), standing in a cauldron (manip).

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FOR ANYONE WHO HAS CONCERNS REGARDING RACISM, PLEASE SKIP TO MY REPLY TO THE FIRST COMMENT. THIS IS NOT A RACIST STORY. SORRY I'M HAVING TO ADDRESS THAT REAL LIFE BULLSHIT UP IN MY FANTASIES, WHERE IT HAS NO PLACE. IMAGINATION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ABILITY WE HAVE. I'M NOT GOING TO LIMIT MINE JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE IS FOCUSING ON ALL THE NEGATIVITY.

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There were some cases Harry refused to take. He wasn't like the other aurors. After the war, he found the amount of time he could spend around people, very limited. The doctors called it PTSD, but closer analysis put his emotional capacity at the level of an empath. When he threw himself over the castle wall with Voldemort, when he died in the forest, and when he came back from all of that, he came back changed. He came back confused at all the information around him, the thoughts he felt coming from others, and the constant pull on his mind as his mood attempted to synchronize itself with every individual he encountered. If there were ten people in a room, it left him split and reeling in ten different directions. Until he caught on, his body ran the gamut between calm, anxious, erratic, and finally stuck on depressed.

He drifted away from his friends and hid in his dark apartment, wanting only rest from the harsh intrusion of the external world. His condition went undiagnosed for two years. By then, his absence from society began to look amiss to his admirers. By then, Severus Snape had made a full recovery and through repeated, failed attempts to atone for his past deception towards Harry, was the only one to realize how badly the young man needed help. Eventually, he was able to coach Harry out of his dysfunction.

At his worst, Harry became addicted to sleeping pills and potions. It was the only way he knew to shut out the feelings of others. If he didn't take the drugs, he would be subjected to the rage the man in the apartment above him suffered. He'd feel the punches endured by the wife. He'd call the police and listen through the walls as the lady lied to keep her husband from going to jail. He'd have to cry when she sat in the tub and cried that night.

That was just one family, out of the many that surrounded him. He couldn't even think about the single lady who'd left everything she had to save her autistic nephew from a foster home. In the corridor, she would smile at Harry and make conversation as they got on the elevator together.

"He's precious," she'd said. "And I'd leave my four-bedroom home for this tiny, one room apartment all over again if I had to."

The smile Harry gave her was broken. Her words said one thing, her feelings said another. Her anger woke him at night. Her real thoughts came out in dripping whispers filled with torment. They sounded like growls. Animalistic and inhuman, like a demon's voice, and he had no way of shutting them out when they emanated so strongly from her.

"This is all your fault," she hissed nastily at the child. "This was the worst mistake of my life."

Mercifully, the little boy's defense mechanism let him tune her out. Harry felt more pain coming from the woman than the child.

He'd taken the apartment because there was something extra uncomfortable in the idea of living at Grimmauld Place. It wasn't just empty, it was infused with the sadness and hatred of Sirius's family. Shadows weighed like stone around his shoulders any time he tried to stay there. And even though he had the money and other properties, he lacked the motivation to invest in cleaning them up, buying fresh property, or building anew. Everything he owned felt tainted, and the thought of researching what he needed made him want to close his eyes and deny that he wanted it that badly. He suspected that even though he needed to be alone, he was still fearful of being lonely. That was a hell he could not make peace with. So he chose the smallest muggle apartment to keep cleaning and maintenance to a minimum, and tried to sleep through the aftermath of the war. He didn't want to wake up until life made sense to him again. And if it never did, if he died in his sleep, well that would be okay too.

He tried a cabin once. Secluded and isolated. Just to see if he'd find any level of comfort. That's when he discovered that the emotional noise coming from his neighbors, had only served to cover up a deeper noise. Alone in the mountains, he'd heard voices. He'd heard the cries of people who were beyond anyone's reach. Whether it was just the cabin he'd rented, or the way of things, people walked into his room at night. People climbed into bed with him. From the teenage girl who kept trying to explain why she'd killed herself, to the hiker who'd chosen Harry's cabin to murder the couple who'd given him a ride, then sickened from the injuries sustained and spent the next two months succumbing to infection and starvation.

All of them, the whole crowd, were right there with him and didn't want him to leave. The ghosts had ways of hiding his medication or making him think he'd misplaced it. When Snape found him, they almost had him in their world. Sick and starved, it became easier to stay in bed than to get out of it. Dreams and hallucinations allowed him to ignore the pain of hunger. He was back in the forest, back walking towards his own conscious death, and needed to face Voldemort more than he needed to eat.

There were good dreams too. The best ones were where everyone was alive, including his parents, and they had all returned to Hogwarts for one very special, beautiful day. An outdoor celebration. Hundreds of seating magically arranged on the lawn, and white blossoms enchanted to stay drifting on the breeze around them. White, for a fresh start. A clean slate. His dad and Sirius joked about Remus attending. It was a happy day, but it seemed important to make his dad understand that Remus and Snape had to stay a polite distance from each other. The only way he knew to do that, to get through to his dad's unruly sense of humor, was to reach out and touch his face. It was such an odd thing for a son to do, it got his attention in a way that words couldn't. "Wolves eat lambs, Dad. Snape kills wolves. It would be a disaster."

His dad always smiled and nodded in understanding, before Harry woke up and found one of the spirits watching him with quiet interest. There was amusement in a dead person being concerned for his fading life, and how comfortable he was.

The murdered woman, Lydia, had sat on the bed and held his hand. "Won't be long now. Once you let go, you can eat with us. It's not so bad. You'll see. We're all the family we've got."

The teenager stroked his hair while the husband and hiker spoke in hushed tones in the corner. Snape would later tell him that he'd practically had to perform an exorcism to get Harry out of there.

"They weren't evil, but they didn't want to give you up."

"Why are they stuck there?" The fact that those people continued to make a home with one another after death, unsettled him. "I get that they all had tragic ends, but they don't seem to hate each other and they're well over it."

Snape liked control and he liked to do the driving. He looked surreal in sunglasses, heavy denim jeans, and a black shirt and dress jacket. He wore Italian boots, not casual shoes. Harry had to smile. So this is what 'street Snape' looked like. His hair was still abandoned to its own eternal part down the middle and fly-away strands chopped inelegantly at his shoulders. Sometimes he put it in a tie, and Harry had to hide the charming effect it had on his heart. In spite of Snape's attempt at modernization, at adapting to life outside of Hogwarts, he retained an air of Victorian manners and the fastidiousness of a refined Dandy who could just as easily punch his way out of a fight as to hex his way out.

His dark colors, which repeated everyday, became as benchmark as his formal teacher's robes, and the sunglasses went well with his silent warning for others to keep their distance. When you stood before his set mouth and opaque lenses, you knew this was not a social call.

Eyes ahead on the road, Snape kept his reply to Harry's comment straightforward. "The dead have adapted. To them, we're dead and they're the ones alive. There's no such thing and it's all perspective. They can only see and react to what they perceive. Revenge was probably the first thing they tried. When they realized they couldn't die again, they had no choice but to exist with one another until their belief systems allow them to move on. They have to forgive themselves and one another."

That felt right to Harry, if incomplete. It could not have been just about the way they died. If anything, the way they died told more about what they already had in common as a group, before any of them met. If hundreds of people can sign up to take the same yoga class, then hundreds can sign up to exit on the same plane crash. That's what the job was teaching him. We make decisions, then trick ourselves into thinking we're helpless victims.

All the times he stepped forward, when Dumbledore expected it of him. All the times he accused Draco of wrongdoing, and volunteered himself to set justice aright. All were minute decisions, reactions really, that had firmly sealed the deal on his fate. He deserved to be slaughtered in the forest, seeing as how a dumb prophecy could not be denied, and had led him to his death like a lamb on a killing block. All those people dead, and here he was in the passenger seat, on a beautiful country road in America, sunlight bright, drinking tea from a thermos shared with Severus Snape. Yes, he had a need to understand death better. And what better way than to follow the paths of those who could no longer communicate with the world of the living.

That was a year ago, and they were past it, driving to a new assignment. Their work remained secret and Ministry funded. It took them all over the world. Everyone, from the Vatican to North American governments, had a covert connection to the Ministry's Department of Unexplained Phenomenon. Sometimes it went beyond magic, and that's where Snape's knowledge of the Dark Arts came in handy. When it was learned that Harry's sensitivity had him in near-constant communication with deceased and non-physical life forms, Snape got down on one knee and alarmed Harry with a proposal to work alongside him for one year, putting unsolvable cases to rest.

"There are ways to protect your nervous system from the assault of stimuli. I'll teach you. The only payment I require is your presence on four cases per year. You will be officially recognized as my partner."

"But I'm not an auror," Harry tried to argue.

"I don't need an auror. You'll pick up those skills as you need them. Right now, I need your ability to listen to the things the dead might have to say. You'll tune them out and in at will. I'll keep you safe."

He agreed to four cases, with the option of dropping out if he didn't like the work. A combination of mental tricks, self-hypnosis, and charms, reduced the emotional storms of others, to a meaningless drone that allowed him to enjoy being awake long enough to get his appetite back. Once eating and finding a reason to go outdoors, the cases turned out to be interesting. They were mostly hauntings in which the living were intruding on the spaces of the dead. When bodies turned up, it was usually a ghost who provided clues to who the murderer was, still present among the living.

In his journal, Harry wrote, 'The muggles have it backwards. Ghosts have no reason to murder anyone. The ones that appear stuck on our plane, are actually quite helpless and they have to come up with all kinds of tricks to try to get people to leave them alone. If they had any real power, they'd leave their traumatized existences. Paranormal television shows disgust me. Amateurs abuse them and treat them as if they are no longer sentient and intelligent. I wish I could show people how alive they'll be when they really die.'

They were given their twelfth case that year, and pulled up in front of a peeling farmhouse, where their maps indicated their latest victim was found. Harry read over his notes to keep the details fresh. He read aloud, as Snape had fully come to expect him to, so that he could survey the grounds while his instincts told him which of Harry's statements would actually serve them and which would not.

"The basement. Paranormal activity centers around a very large antique cauldron. Mysterious accidents deter any disturbance to the cauldron. There have been six related deaths, four of which the victims were actually found drowned inside of it. The other two were attempting to remove it on separate occasions. It says here, Anna Maybell Karrington, was the first victim. Her family owned the property, and the cauldron makes no sense because they were strictly devout Christians. Evidently, she hid her witchcraft so well, that not even her family suspected her abilities until the day her body was discovered, naked and dead, inside the cauldron. The autopsy determined it to be a suicide by drowning, I don't even know how that's possible, and since then three other victims were found in the same way. One, neighboring high school kids who broke into the house on a dare, two others, experienced investigators who were conducting their own research. The family has since moved and the property condemned, but any start to demolish it, proves to be very unlucky for anyone who tries."

"Our instructions?"

"Investigate and report only. Do not attempt to subdue any malevolent forces at this time. The Department has reason to believe the cauldron is actually a Palestinian portal dating back to the 2nd Century B.C. The family's bloodline ties them to the Essenes. They would've had magic suppressed by muggle politics. It's unclear how the pot got past their moral defenses, but the report does say that an uncle had a very successful antique business in the late sixties, and left everything to his brother's children, having no heirs of his own. The inexperienced siblings lost the business to bankruptcy but managed to scatter a few treasures to safekeeping."

"Right then."

They exited the car to perform a preliminary walk through. Both put on gloves and basic protective wards. Harry grabbed a folder filled with crime scene photos and notes, as well as a charmed backpack filled with devices and tools. He followed Snape down a sinking concrete path that led up to the front porch. Weathered and split boards whined beneath their steps. Perennial blossoms with gnarled shoots threatened to block the length of the covered porch, the roof of which sunk under the weight of strain and weakened slats. It was a two-story home with a rusted, tin roof and a derelict outhouse about three hundred meters away. A rick of wood, still neatly stacked, sat rotting through years of abandonment.

As Snape examined the doors and windows for signs of intrusion, Harry turned his attention to the highway running adjacent to the house, and all the farmland currently going to waste. Even with broken and boarded windows, it was a place that must've been serene and happy at one time. It must've seen children running barefoot in the yard. There were places where smooth white stone designated gardens that had shriveled long ago. A barn was falling apart some distance behind the house, and piles of rust standing amid encroaching vegetation, indicated a turn of the century vehicle and tractor parts united in decay and atrophy.

Further off, he saw the unmistakable spike of a steeple, and tried to imagine living there and waking up everyday of his life to not only see it, but to attend services there. Everything about the place said the new was grown out of the old. The old wasn't buried. It wasn't hauled off and its end acknowledged. It was incorporated into the new. It was left to fester and recycle into new shoots. This was a place where generations never died. They latched on to the young and stayed on for the ride. At least it had, until something broke that cycle with the death of Anna Maybell Karrington.

Getting inside was easy enough. A wave of his wand, and Snape lingered at the threshold long enough to determine there were no immediate threats in the vicinity. Stale air was thick enough to choke on in the dark. One well aimed charm, and Snape created a temporary light source that could follow him as he went further. The inside was typical of an abandoned house. Old furniture sat molding among the build up of refuse that littered the floor. It was as if the family simply walked out instead of taking the time to move. Family pictures mildewed in their frames along the walls. A china cabinet, filled with porcelain collections, reflected his and Harry's faces as they peered inside. Some interloper had drug a mattress downstairs and left it in front of the grate. There was evidence of rats having had their way with it, amid candles and discarded wine and beer bottles that were clearly meant to enhance an evening of partying for past intruders.

As per their drill, Harry waited by the door while Snape took the upstairs. It was only a preliminary, as their notes already gave them a full report on what was known. Once he determined there was no one hiding in any of the rooms, he cleared Harry to ward the house and they found steps leading to the basement from a tiny kitchen. They had to first push a seventy's pea-green stove and refrigerator out of the way to get to the basement stairs, but they did it.

"I don't want to waste magic in this place anymore than we have to. If there's an active presence here, we could trigger it." So they moved the appliances by hand. Once standing on a landing of steep, bare wood steps, Snape sent his light source into the dark. It expanded, a fluff of illumination, and lit up the walls below as it floated in a circular motion around the room. It dodged ducts and water pipes. It went through several sections of cement bricked partitions and crawl space. While they couldn't make out all the details from their spot, they knew the sphere of light would turn red if it found something potentially threatening. The map they'd been given, put the cauldron at the Northeast quadrant of the house. While part of the basement was finished in concreting flooring and a tinker's shelving, most of it was strewn with old tires, paint cans, toys, and garden tools.

Generations of childhood and home maintenance blocked access to the deeper portions of the basement. He and Snape had to removed two broken vacuum cleaners, a twin bed set, and a table-top sewing machine before it occurred to them that items had been deliberately piled up to keep intruders out. The disarray wasn't just caused by squatters and partying kids. Someone knew that people would come looking for their kicks and tried to keep them from serious harm.

Behind all the junk, they found another patch of raw earth floor and unfinished walls that made them stoop over. Built within them, was a door. Hanging on it's hinges, it had been reinforced into place with extra nails and planks of wood. They had to tear them away, and break the padded locks with magic, in spite of Snape's misgivings. Inside, they were able to stand upright. It was a finished room, complete with a window that told them they weren't as far underground as they had thought, and the room sat within the outermost wall of the basement, not buried deep within. The window might've been somehow camouflaged from the outside, but they hadn't taken the time to inspect the foundation of the house to see. Now, it suddenly seemed relevant.

The cauldron was the most obvious feature. They kept one eye on it, and one scanning the space around them. The room was about 14' X 20' and furnished with cheap throw rugs over a concrete floor, a fire pit with ventilation piped into an old fashioned wood-burning stove, a cushioned, pew-looking bench along the back wall, a sink, and a set of storage cabinets in the corner. There was a single book shelf, but dust outlines told them that the books had been deliberately removed. That also meant the cabinets were empty. The room had been "swept" clear of all artifacts, except the cauldron. It sat, elevated over a grill and pit. Snape had to climb a platform of cement blocks to peer down into it.

"Empty," he told Harry, who waited by the door.

Harry wasn't ready to go any closer. It was the biggest cauldron he'd ever seen, and all too similar to the one Voldemort came out of when he was fourteen and portkeyed against his will at the Triwizard tournament. There was something foreboding about the dull black of cast iron swelling in such an extreme size. The room was a fire hazard. Surely, a room this size couldn't hold the kind of heat necessary to brew anything in that pot. But if it were a really powerful pot, it wouldn't need that much heat. It would only need spells.

"No, wait." Snape leaned in. "There's something here."

Harry wanted to protest when he bent further over the rim of the cauldron. He didn't like the feelings coming to him, but he had nothing to validate his discomfort. "Be careful."

For this room, they'd had no need for a light source. They'd let it dissipate behind them. As Snape's wandtip glowed to illumenate the depths of the pot, Harry suddenly got the feeling they should've at least left some light outside the room. Unfriendly things traveled along shadows. They weren't always dead things, but thoughts filled with so much potency from the living, that they lingered when the living had gone. Tremendous rage could take on a life of its own. So could shame, and anything else that people denied the light of day.

On the platform, Snape took out a handkerchief, a vial, and several small tools from hidden compartments in his jacket. Once a potion's master, always on the ready to scoop up some ingredient or sample. The tendency fit very well with his investigative skills.

He's found something he can scrape, Harry thought. Good. They'd get a sample, get some vibes, then go. But as his former teacher bent, apparently straining to reach something his wand couldn't unstick without risking damage, almost a minute passed.

Harry grimaced. This wasn't going to be a few minute's inspection. Snape came up, redfaced and flustered. The look he gave, said what was coming.

"I've no choice."

"No." Harry rushed forward. "Don't get in there. You're already too close."

"Do you detect an unfriendly presence?"

"No, but something feels off. What's in there?" He didn't tell the other that he wasn't exactly ready to open himself up to this place. He needed to work his way up to it. Murders were tricky. You had to somehow see what happened without being pulled into the victim's pain. That took a feat of emotional balance. That took time.

"It's a residue. Char. There could be a chemical trace. I might be able to match it to a spell."

It wasn't like Snape to charge ahead without considering more options, especially with his body, but Harry dismissed it as excitement. The pot must've been alluring to him. Ancient, masterful, and deadly. He could be forgiven any rash decisions.

"Hold on. There's got to be something we can use to reach the bottom," Harry told him. He thought he'd seen a golf club caddy full of old curtain rods when they were clearing junk to get in here. But Snape pointed to the wood stove.

"There. The poker. It'll do."

Harry handed it to him and stood back as Snape attempted to scrape the bottom. The cauldron was wider than it was tall. It came to his sternum and he used the extra cement blocks to raise his height until it came to his waist and he could bend over it. He reached out and kept bending forward until his torso disappeared below the rim. Harry's breath hitched, feeling the strain on his own back muscles, even though he wasn't the one digging into the pot.

He heard reverberating curse words that echoed around his head as if his was the one stuck inside. After it went on for a moment, he begged Snape, "For god's sake, please come up."

Snape was stubborn. Even a wizard as intelligent as himself, refused to let something that should've been so simple, be anything else. He straightened, but he was even redder and very displeased. He looked at Harry as if this were his fault.

"Mr. Potter, would you join me up here and see what you make of this?"

The only time he reverted back to calling Harry by his last name, was when, it seemed to Harry, he thought he was being maddeningly unhelpful.

"You're interacting too much with it," he said. "It might be better to use magic than to exert physical energy."

"It's going to use whatever attention we invest in it, anyway. Up here. Now."

Harry heard the warning. Either you will be useful or you will not. Choose.

Before stepping onto the platform, Harry reminded himself that they were both protected by body wards and a host of counter measures. But still, one did not go traipsing through a jungle of unknown territory without respect for dangers. Their magical shields were strong, but they didn't know what kind of spells kept the cauldron an active threat long after its owner had died. He was careful to keep his gloved hands off the thing while he peered into it.

At first he saw nothing, just a dull, charred bottom, dry of any previous evidence. The reports stated that once the bodies were removed, specialized cleanup crews were deployed to tackle the job of scouring the area, and reported that the cauldron had cleaned itself. At least, no evidence of a body was left. Even the water, in which victims were found suspended like fetuses in amniotic fluid, was gone and the iron dry for the most part. In some places, a black resin crusted along the sides and bottom, in long streaks like those left by a spoon along the sides of a bowl.

Harry suddenly saw his cousin Dudley scraping chocolate frosting from a bowl, used to prepare a cake that Harry wasn't allowed to taste. At twelve, Dudley's chubby fingers had made the chocolate drizzling down the sides look so good, and made his pleasure very loudly known while Harry watched. What that had to do with the cauldron, he didn't know, but he clamped down on the hunger and longing suddenly filling his stomach by telling himself he was a grown wizard and could now have all the cake he wanted. Icing was for children. He much preferred a fresh, un-iced cake straight from the oven.

"What on earth are you staring at?"

Snape jarred him from his thoughts. Icing. Black resin. Right. "There's a compulsion spell here. Very strong. Very subtle."

The memory of wanting something very badly, something childish and infuriating, told him that fundamental pain and pleasure influences were at work.

"Victims were probably lured in here by the promise of something they wanted."

In his mind, chocolate icing ran, darkly black, in a thin, shiny sheet, over the top edge of the moistest Devil's Chocolate cake he'd ever seen. The super fluffy kind made with pudding. He could see his reflection in the icing. He had to swallow down all the saliva pouring into his mouth.

"I keep seeing cake."

Snape's frown didn't surprise or upset him. It wasn't personal, just reactionary. Harry didn't like the clues his mind was giving him any more than Snape did. They both knew they had to be patient.

The resin had crusted over ages ago, forming a thick layer over the iron in some places. For a brief second, he worried that it might contain traces of human remains and he was already being contaminated by the hunger of the dead to rejoin the living. It had something to do with hunger. With appetite. It helped to remember that all the bodies had been found whole, not damaged. Not wounded or mutilated. Simply with water in their lungs. He looked to where Snape pointed with the poker. There appeared to be a raised place in the residue, like a tar bubble that had congealed ages ago and was now a dry and chipped piece of the pot. When he lightly hit it with the poker, there was no noise, no sensation of contact, and no change in the state of the crackled boil.

They looked at each other. Snape confirmed, "The poker doesn't touch the bottom."

"There is no bottom," Harry finished for him. "It's false. That's how the portal works."

Snape did that thing where he faced Harry, but his stare glistened with intense calculations. "We'll see."

He left the platform and the room. Harry heard him rummaging through the junk. When he came back, he was carrying an old, wooden kitchen chair in one hand, and a microwave missing its door under his other arm. He deposited them beside the pot. Without a word, he went back for more. The objects he brought back, Harry guessed, were chosen for their weight. He knew what Snape was planning.

"Inanimate objects aren't going to have the effect on it that a person would have," Harry insisted. He knew he deserved the humorless glare shot back at him, but he really didn't want Snape to do what he was about to do.

When all objects were gathered, he stood by and watched them lowered into the cauldron, stacked strategically to concentrate all the weight in the center. The chair served as a base for all the other objects. When there must've been at least fourteen stone in weight, he stood back, satisfied.

"You can't do this." Harry felt the words drag from him. He didn't want an argument and that's exactly what he knew was going to happen. "This is crossing the line."

Snape began removing the objects and letting them slide onto the floor below. He gave Harry the gift of ignoring him and jumped, pulling his weight above the rim. He threw one leg over and climbed in. Harry grabbed his jacket sleeve, unwilling to let go. When he did, he realized it was a bit like throwing out one's arm to keep a child from being thrown forward in a car. Any real collision, just like any activated portal, would not only take the child, but take the arm with it. But it made him feel better, and he wasn't the least embarrassed when Snape stood, flat-footed and at his full height, facing him from inside the cauldron.

"Unhand me, Harry." He straightened his jacket.

Abashed, Harry almost let go. But he stood his ground. "No. I'm grounding you. As long as you have a connection to the outside, maybe you can't be influenced by whatever's going on here."

Snape could argue with many things, Ministry policies, Dumbledore's ethics, lampshades. But he could not argue with logic. "Suit yourself. You'd better hope it doesn't work the other way around."

"You really should've discussed this with me before you jumped in there."

"We both know this would've been an incomplete investigation, had I not. The bodies were found here, which means they didn't vanish into some portal. Whatever came through, came and left. We have to learn as much as we can."

"It doesn't feel right."

"It isn't supposed to. People died here. I respect the warning, but we must get this over with."

"Bind yourself to the spot, to this room. Or let me."

"Harry..."

Harry's grip tightened. "Use me as an anchor. Anything but free-standing in this portal."

Snape's mouth drew tight, as if he'd already corrected an errant student twice, and would not be correcting him again. But his touch on Harry's hand was gentle as he removed it.

"Harry, I'm wearing full-body wards, the same as you. If I bind myself to this room in any way, I may not be able to leave it at the critical moment of an attack. Or worse, I could bind something to me. If there's something coming through, it will have to go through my magic to get me. I promise you, I'm not going anywhere."

He pulled away from Harry, whose jaw tightened.

With worry darkening his gaze, Harry stepped back from the cauldron as far has he could without leaving the platform. Holding his wand inconspicuously at his side, he made a quick pentagram of protection and set his intention for it to keep Snape safely in this room. It just seemed to him that the older wizard wasn't thinking with his usual vigilance, and was perhaps already affected by whatever tainted craft had gone awry in this place.

That's when they both saw the inner rim begin to radiate. Not all at once, but in spots. Scrapings emerged into view like a poker's red glow. At first the markings looked runic, and it alarmed Harry to see them surrounding Snape. But they flickered in and out of view and would not stay stable long enough to be read.

Snape's eyebrow went up. "What did you do?"

"Protected you." Harry's tone was defensive, if somewhat regretful.

"It's activated. Get down on the floor."

"No. You get out."

Snape's expression snapped closed, but they both knew an element of disappointment, an element of 'I'll deal with you later,' had crept in.

Dependability was what made their team effort successful. If Harry compromised that, they had nothing. In one second, Harry felt he had reduced years of proving himself worthy of Snape's respect, to ashes. Having befriended one of the most imposing and respected figures from his childhood, was a merit badge he wasn't willing to part with. After everything he'd lost, walking alongside Severus Snape in friendship, in a post-war world, was a powerful feeling. The only good feeling he had. Being awarded this wizard's respect, was a rare honor that seemed to make up for all the fuck-ups that had lost him his foothold in the real world. Snape was all he had. He couldn't let this slip cost him that.

Distraction caused the other to scan the ring of fading language burning through the metal around him. "Can you read it? You've already triggered it. Risk a little more and read it."

Furious with himself, Harry squinted at the ember-like marks. "It's plain English. It's a spell. An incantation. This must be what sets it off."

"Read it. Use the Ministry's pen recorder. Perhaps their database will recognize the spell."

Harry shook his head. "No. To read it is to activate it. I'm sure."  
Another hard look, and Harry knew that Snape was not above shooting an arm out and snatching him up like a peeping Slytherin caught in Gryffindor's female dormitory.

"You've already activated it. Now let's arm ourselves with information, or fall prey to whatever forces are now taking shape as we speak. There might be a counter spell, should we run into trouble."

Harry raked his hands over his face. Yeah, he'd fucked up, but something about this wasn't right, and the fact that he hadn't seen one ghost amid all his uncomfortable vibes, didn't add up. What was in that pot, that even ghosts didn't hang around for? Still, he couldn't blow this for Snape.

"It says, 'Bare your soul, ye who wish to enter. Bare your soul, ye who grants surrender. Tell your Other, yes, yes, yes, to open the door and meet your lover.'

He finished, a bit red-faced, but certain of what was written. The molten letters stayed alight, as if confirming he'd gotten them right. Now Snape could see them too.

"You're right. It is a spell, but it's only an invitation. If we want to know what happened, one of us will have to follow the instructions, and one of us will have to record it."

"No."

"I'm hearing that a lot from you today. If anything goes wrong, you'll be right here to help me out. Correct?"

"Of course I'm not going anywhere, but what if I can't act fast enough."

Snape reached into his pocket and threw a small object at Harry. "That is a conjoined port. A double-terminated portkey. I have its mate. If my body is taken and I can't apparate through normal means back to you, I can try to come back using your half of the portkey. They're programmed as one. And you are not to follow me, but to report to the Ministry for backup. All I want to do, is see the creature we're dealing with. Is it Anna herself, having designed a way to come back? Or is it something she has set lose, which now has to be quarantined from the human world? Now, what exactly do you suppose the instructions are saying?

Harry put a deliberately stumped look on his face. Conjoined portkeys were restricted. They gave aurors false confidence, making them think they could port themselves in and out of danger. They didn't always work when malevolent spells were involved. He was going to fake not knowing the answer to Snape's question as long as it took, but Snape figured it out in less than a minute.

"Jesus, this woman could've made it more of a challenge. No wonder six people are dead." He bent down to remove his boots. Bare your soul, meant bare your sole. Let your naked feet make contact with the bottom of the cauldron.

The flourish that deposited black socks and footware over the sides of the pot, distracted Harry. It made him want to see Snape's feet, and when an image of them burst onto the screen of his mind, his concentration couldn't recover. There they were, deprived of sun, thick-toed, and muscular in their bare exposure. He couldn't actually see them, but his mind filled with what they must've looked like, uncomfortably scraping the cold, grainy surface below them. Their padding would be pink and tender, in contrast to jointed tone and definition. Vulnerable and fleshy, where Snape was otherwise concealed and firm.

He didn't know why the image was so strong in his mind, but he rationalized that it was because the bastard was using his feet to do something he shouldn't be. But knowing some part of Snape was naked in that space, a part that never went publicly undressed and was therefore practically sacred to Harry's way of thinking, really burned it into him.

This was not a man who took off his shoes and ran his toes through the grass. In fact, since partnering with him and sharing long car rides when they couldn't always use magic in their cases, sharing flights, hotel rooms, and one another's general personal space, he'd only caught glimpses of Snape's bare feet. From the bathroom to the bed, from the bed to the bathroom, and usually compromised by slip-ons, on the few occasions when they had to share a room. Each time he emerged from one or the other, he was always completely dressed in casual wear or nightwear. He was careful not to show his skin, unlike Harry who was more comfortable walking around in shorts and a T-shirt than anything. The fact that Snape struck him as bodily insecure, in spite of walking around with all those credentials and all that power as a wizard, made Harry feel like he was privileged to know a great secret of Snape's. He was careful not to mention it, lest the other put an end to even allowing him to see those beautiful feet.

He heard Snape, standing in position, intone, "Yes, yes, yes."

Somehow, Snape without shoes was more naked than anyone else without clothes. Harry blushed for him, and waited. He saw the other poised for the unknown, and it hit Harry out of no where. People died in this cauldron, not because they figured out that they had to remove their shoes, but they interpreted baring one's soul as getting naked. And that's how the bare soles of their feet triggered the portal. Feet are one of the most sensitive parts of the body. They ground one to earth, to the crystal magnetism within Earth, which polarizes all energy. The pot, in effect disconnects one from the earth plane.

By the time he figured this out, the pot was already filling with vaporous mist. And Snape appeared frozen, lost in thought. Harry raised his wand. He hadn't gotten the Ministry pen. He hadn't pulled out any of the tools and devices he was supposed to be using to capture this evidence. They'd just have to rely on his memories. Snape's safety was too important. And right then, when he called, Snape was no longer responding to him.

"Snape!" Harry raised his voice. His former teacher remained as still as if he were caught in the first seconds after removing his shoes. As if he were trying to detect a change in the situation and could not see the white vapor rising around his arms. He raised his arms and Harry thought he was reaching to steady himself by gripping the rim, but they remained partially elevated away from his body. His eyes focused inward, the way one does when listening for something.

Harry stepped closer. He reached in, ready to grab. But as his hand and arm encountered the mist rising out, it dissolved from visibility. That is, everywhere the vapor touched, he lost sight of that part of himself. The vapor was the portal, not the pot. He drew back, astonished. His arm and hand returned to him. Once he saw that he hadn't lost them, he reached again for Snape, who was no more than two feet from him, yet looked as if he could no longer see Harry at all. He felt his fingers working, grasping, but he couldn't see them and he never made contact with Snape's body. He kept stretching into the vapor as it kept getting thicker.

In the bottom of the cauldron, white swirls blocked most visibility. Something shifted, reflecting the light, and Harry got a sense that it was water. Or some liquid serving as a conductor for whatever was coming through. He thought of jumping in and throwing his whole body at Snape, to bring him back, but the idea of seeing his body disappear, made him hesitate. Why wasn't Snape disappearing? What if he went away but Snape remained? While these thoughts reeked havoc in his head, mist began boiling over the cauldron in an explosion of thin plumes that knocked Harry back. He fell from the platform, landing on his back in front of Snape. Immediately ready to jump to his feat, he stopped. What he saw next, made so little sense to him, he couldn't push up from the floor.

They knew by now the woman was a witch. They were piecing together that she'd created some spell to call forth her lover. They'd suspected all along that someone, or something was going to come out of that sinister looking pot. No witch needed a pot that big. Maybe it was a long distance relationship. Maybe she'd summoned something that wasn't human. Either way, when Harry saw it, he wasn't ready for it.

Arms lifted behind Snape. Dark arms. Wet arms. They were muscular and they seemed to glide in oily smoothness, around Snape's chest. The temperature dropped so fast in Harry's chest, he thought his heart would stop. His oxygen certainly did. A man had risen behind Snape. A black man. Before Harry could even see his face, he felt his power. Wide hands raked down Snape's torso. The magic was so strong, Harry felt it leaving the tips of those fingers and sinking directly into Snape's clothes and skin. He heard the intake of breath, as Snape startled from the puncture, caught on not knowing what it was. His whole body drew up. His breathing hitched. It sounded like being stabbed instead of gently caressed, which was what the being standing behind Snape appeared to be doing.

He's infusing him. With what?

Just as he wondered how much Snape was aware of the presence, Snape's hands came up to push at whatever he felt at his chest. The entity's hands slipped out of his like smoke, only to come back and cover his. Harry could not, in good conscience, call this thing a man, though clearly Anna Maybell Karrington's tastes ran along a very specific packaging. Either it was her magic taking her preferred form, or it was an independent life-form, acting of its own accord. Harry had no idea which, but his mouth hung open as he watched it pull Snape's hands down to his sides and began removing his jacket.

"Snape! Can you hear me?" From the floor, the sight of so much going wrong so fast, weakened his resolve. He made himself stand and insisted with each passing second that he was not going to let anything happen to Snape.

Snape was not a passive man, which was why his gaze out into the room confused Harry. Why wasn't he fighting? Why wasn't he struggling, or at least acknowledging that this thing was in there with him, touching him? His stare wasn't empty, it was full of reaction. It was full of emotion, all locked behind some silent control that served as a barrier between himself and everything in the room, including Harry.

Harry remembered a battery of defensive spells and fired them, knowing with complete dread they were not going to have any effect on this thing. He made himself look deep into the entity's face, and realized that features were still forming. The grin was the most prominent. Cast in shadow behind Snape's head, the grin leaned into view over his shoulder. The being appeared to take extra delight, spreading its grin as its eyes and nose were last to surface out of skin stretched that tightly across empty sockets and cartilage holes for nasal cavities. The face formed quickly, but not quick enough to make Harry forget what came before it. When the well-formed structure of a human male looked back at him, with a dark light in its eyes and a deceptively inviting grin, Harry took a step back.

This was too much. Too much loss of power, too soon. How did he stop it? Instinct told him, he didn't. All he could do now was try to get more protection around Snape. He dropped to his bag. He could call for backup. He wasted precious seconds rummaging before his brain let him remember to accio the Ministry pen. It worked with a tablet to allow him access to files too cumbersome to journey with them. By itself, a hastily scratched symbol could get him a team of aurors who were ready to drop everything and apparate to precise coordinates provided on their side of the data.

He didn't know what happened. He used the charm, and everything shot out of the bag. Papers went flying. His shrunken laptop ejected full-force, full-size, and sliced his forehead on its way out. It lay, lid split from keyboard, some distance away. On all fours, Harry scrambled to find the pen. A second accio, and every pen-sized projectile in the room came for him. Loose nails pulled out of the walls. Rusting tools flew from cabinet drawers. Only a screwdriver actually broke his skin and stuck in his arm, but it was shallow enough to pull out before blood began to drip into his eyes from the laptop injury, confusing him even more.

So he couldn't do magic. Not with that thing on the loose. Behind Snape, the man-thing took on a robust presence, as if growing in size and magic. He looked like he was whispering in Snape's ear. His slick head remained hairless. His teeth showed stark white against warm, bronze tones, and there was an undeniable taunt in his smile. He looked at Harry as if he might have been talking about him, his whispers keeping Snape in some kind of psychological prison. Snape's jacket was gone, and more alarming, the entity seemed to have sped up time, opening his shirt and pulling it apart from the collar. It wasn't even a button down shirt. But those caramelized hands wanted it parted, so it parted, exposing Snape's bare chest to the brightness of the room.

Harry took this affront personally. If bare feet entered into the realm of taboo for Snape, then this was an attack of extreme obscenity that could not be borne. If he could've shut his eyes on the sight of so much surface area on his teacher's body, he would've. Snape's skin was a canvas of ruddy complexion that took swollen shape over flat, rounded formations of a middle-aged man's pectoral muscles. Skin showed so much. Told so much. It left no secrets. It conveyed density and surprising tautness. It conveyed strain and sensitivity, as a barely perceptible tremor moved up its sprawling dark hairs. Mostly bare, there was still a tree of sprawling dark growth that stamped most male bodies with sexual maturity. Even though Harry hadn't been his student for years, he still felt this was too personal for a student to see of his teacher. In his right mind, it would have been humiliating. As it was, it provided the kind of shock that panicked Harry into thinking their relationship might not survive it. He could handle it, but Snape was pathological when it came to control. Especially over his body. If there was anyone alert behind those eyes, he wasn't sure his pride could handle this.

Snape could've been in pain for all Harry knew. His circulation reddened his extremities and deepened the color of blood vessels beneath all the inappropriate places Snape wouldn't want him to see. Why was the bloody thing undressing him? Even the most vindictive enemy knew to strike and destroy. You don't undress a man before you kill him. You don't attack his dignity. Snape needed his layers of clothing. He still wore them like armor, and Harry had always respected his claim on whatever causes a man to conceal himself so.

"Leave him alone!" he yelled as hard and as loud as he could. He was going for another when he noticed something very wrong. Even more wrong. Aside from the clear distress etched in Snape's face, his clothing billowed around him. Shirt and pants appeared to lose form and fall into folds of long fabric that covered him in strategic places. His hair had loosened from its band, and to Harry's horror, his old Potions Professor stood arrayed in his former coat and academic robe.

_You've always wanted your teacher, Harry._

It was a whisper, a taunt, that broke the surface of Harry's mind.  
Once spoken, Snape's eyes seemed to focus on him. Whether it was there or not, Harry thought he saw misery. Blame. Panick pulled him forward, wand brandished. As soon as he reached the cauldron, another force pushed him back. He stumbled, but remained standing.

"Snape! I'm trying to help you." He yelled as if force could drive understanding into Snape's skull, and force the blame out. Not this. Please not this. This was a witch's sex toy. This thing was going to do something they couldn't return from.

"Please don't hurt him. Whatever you want, I'll do anything. We just wanted to see how the cursed thing worked. We didn't want anyone else to get hurt."

The thing was no longer grinning, but playful enjoyment teetered along the edges of its smile. It hid its face within the shadow behind Snape's head and winked at Harry. It must've been imagined after a model, Harry thought. It obviously knew that it was handsome. Even beautiful, and that such looks were prized in a world of insecure lifeforms. Harry didn't know how he knew, he just knew. That thing was pulling information from his mind, and in that link, he understood some stuff as well.

Snape as his old teacher again, was a secret. No one was supposed to know how bad those fantasies went. How deep. Even he refused to look at them until they encroached on his most desperate private moments. No one was supposed to know. That's how he kept things good between him and Snape. That's how he got to stay close.

His gut sickened. "Don't you dare."

Excitement rippled from the thing. Harry felt it shake the whole room. He choked on his own anger, ready to risk whatever rather than watch as Snape was tortured. His wand shook in his hand and knew that if he projected everything he was feeling into it, the rebound might just kill them all. He'd do it, rather than see Snape suffer.

_You'll do no such thing._

The voice split both hemispheres of his brain as it forced its way into his head. It brought with it, a mental compression that felt like gas being released into his bloodstream. His feet and calves became the heaviest, until his knees buckled and he found himself watching his teacher from the floor. His blood congealed in his veins, turning into a thick syrup that circulated heat instead of oxygen and nutrients. He couldn't move, yet his mind lifted free of his leaden limbs, and drew close to the sight of Snape enfolded in the creature's arms. He didn't want to see what was going to happen. Yet the entity made sure he could not look away.

Snape's body, mostly covered, jutted out from the pressure behind it. His mouth held partially open, as if he wanted to ask a question, then closed thin-lipped as the body pressing into him, did so as obscenely as possible. Tension drew his brow together and breath left him, revealing to Harry that he was not so much paralyzed as he was restrained by the thing's magic. Harry tried to look into his eyes, and Snape's flush, as well as his pained deflection, told Harry that he was supremely alert and aware behind his restraint.

Even as he thought, 'I can't let this happen,' he wasn't clear on what was going to happen, only that this great man was going to be used and likely killed. He fought against inertia weighing him to the floor. That's when it felt, wrongly enough, like the biggest thing weighing him down, was the liquid led pooling in the center of his body.

Inappropriate heat swelled him where he should've been shriveled. It was like something forcing his thickened blood to enter erectile tissue by pure pressure. In doing so, the process reversed its effects on his thinking. He could see bits of Snape's chest and legs sticking out of the robe and the temptation to follow into those shadows had never felt or looked so good. He knew this must've been magic being used against him, the same way it was being used against Snape, but it didn't render the sight before him any less arousing. He felt his eyes burn and his chest cave. Tears spilled, not because he couldn't help Snape, but because he couldn't help liking it. This wasn't a witch's plaything. This was a demon, and it knew every inch of his secrets. It knew what he wanted to see. It knew that he was gagging on his starvation to see places on this man, that no one but God saw. Whatever magic this was, it pulled his desire from him, right through his nervous system and ripped it up the length of his penis.

He knew it was wrong, but he wanted that thing to push against Snape from behind again. He wanted to see his former teacher bear down on the pressure, cheeks trembling with indignity, sweat beading his forehead. He wanted it and hated it at the same time.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into Snape's soul. If the man was too angry to hear him at the moment, too overcome, then surely something inside him had the power to know that Harry was truly sorry for what he didn't have the right to witness. For what he wanted. And he knew, by his connection with Snape, his connection with the thing in his body, ruling his body, that he was going to get what he wanted, even if it killed Snape.

The entity touched where Harry's eyes focused. He had only to let his mind graze over the notion of Snape's exposed thighs disappearing into a curvature of shadow and fabric, and the entity's hands were there, giving Harry the sensation of what it was like to traverse all that flesh and those dark hairs. This is where an older man's soft tissue, beneath hard muscle, made things interesting. There was so much of it, bending under strong fingers, and tapering into hidden places, that made for so much more meat and friction, and sweet secret enclosures. It wasn't just skin surface sensation, that the thing gave Harry. It sent Snape's rolling pleasure into him, and its own, so that Harry's gut churned with will-breaking need that went as deeply into him as much as it dripped out.

He groaned behind bandages he wasn't wearing. They weren't real. That's just where his mind went. That was just the kind of scream that wanted out, to be so involved in restraint and shame. That monster, in the image of a beautiful black man, gave him everything when it broke the lock on Snape's clinched thighs, worked its fist between them, and Harry knew from the way Snape's spine shot rod-straight, that it burrowed into his body. If there were sounds, the ears never heard it. But Harry felt the impact tear from the top of Snape's head and travel in spasmodic rejection down the length of him. His skin rippled with shock waves as his body shook on what the fist was driving into him. That same fist hid the most prized organ that Harry wanted to see. But at the same time, those massive thighs shook to endure the energy being introduced at the base of Snape's spine.

Snape's mouth parted and soundless passion escaped him. It looked a lot like sorrow and grief against closed eyes, but Harry saw that his privates had escaped the fist that wrangled them, and spilled out from behind the entity's wrist. Too engorged to stay hidden, too angry to stay private, he saw it for what it was. A red log of runaway cock, flopping helplessly as that dark fist continued to ram its way from the front, into the innermost part of him. The muscles in Snape's calves flexed to keep him standing.

Looking back, Harry would be able to see this as the altered state that it was. It would help to rationalize how he could possibly see what Snape's legs were doing, since they were concealed by the cauldron. But the entity was helping him to see. The entity was showing him everything.

Snape, hair in his eyes, mouth agape from the speed and pressure jarring him, bent forward slightly and hung on in the grip of sexual depravity. Harry saw things no one had a right to see. He saw his teacher's body handled and opened, and forced to give up its white milk in a display so indecent, that he wanted to kiss Snape's trembling lips and tell him that it was going to be okay. Tell him they were going to survive this humiliation and never speak of it. He'd kiss those tragic lips until they burned and kissed him back, out of the sheer need to be soothed and comforted. No one that strong, accepts indignities of this magnitude. His pride had to survive it. It had to.

Harry, impaled between his love for Snape, and his glutton for heat, which he wanted darker, heavier, and harder, knew that this suffering was a gift. Snape could've come here alone. He could've endured this without Harry, yet here Harry was, feasting on the very marrow of forced pleasure with the only person he'd ever been remotely sexually interested in, in his life.

As if this rape wasn't enough, the entity filled Harry's mind with what was coming. He saw Snape's shoulders go straight with tension, and knew that Snape had gotten the message as well. They felt it before they saw it. As if the witch's sense of humor came from every caricature and stereotype she could please herself with, the entity came from behind Snape, revealing an endowment that was exaggerated. Its black penis hung stiff and straight under its own weight, rather than buoyant and upright. It was so ridged with a veinous network of thick, slick skin, that it looked more like a deformity to Harry, than anything delectable. There was beauty in it, but it was a monstrous kind of beauty, and any witch who didn't mind being torn apart by that, must've been out of her fucking mind.

This had to end. This would kill anyone. They're bodies had been tranquilized with pleasure, so that unspeakable things could be done with them. That's how the murders worked. The entity found your secrets and used them against you, and you never came out of that pot.

The remainder of Snape's clothing was cast aside. All a performance. All a show. Just for Harry. It was a level of nudity that shamed Harry to his core. He wasn't worthy of seeing this much. A part of him knew that his arousal was a lie. That it was artificial. And a part of him drank in every inch of uncovered crevice, every chunk of sinew, and every pigmented pucker, from areola to that tripple thick mound of ass, that the entity could offer to Harry.

He didn't know how it happened. He just knew that the thing was feeding off of his arousal, and doing everything in it's power to enjoy a great feast. Snape was the sacrifice. Through his link with the entity, Harry was given the most forbidden sight of all. He saw those black hands steel across Snape's backside and open his hair-lined buttocks to reveal something that had Snape closing his eyes tightly against. All three of them saw it. Two of them wanted it, and Snape's restraint strained under the weight of their desire.

He wasn't made to be the desirable one, Harry thought. That's why I want him. He has no idea how beautiful he is. He had no idea until now, that his small tight place, pink as a virgin's virtue, could be as desirable as any woman's. That someone, or something, could actually salivate over it. Over him. Men forgot that they were just as vulnerable as women, until they were in the presence of someone who wanted that hidden place.

The monster of a man, the entity, took the length of himself in hand, and worked the head of it against that small, closed space. Snape's lower teeth bared in response. His open mouth lost a thin jet of saliva as he grimaced against the blunt object that was too wide to breech even his first ring of muscles.

Harry convulsed with the scream that wanted out of him. He slammed his body against the floor and beat his head senselessly in an effort to wake up his control of himself. He would slash his own throat if Snape had to endure being killed is such a way. Something told him his logic was flawed, but he didn't see either of them getting out alive unless he found the strength to break this monster's hold. It was like trying to wake up when you were already awake and couldn't wake up anymore. This reality wasn't acceptible. He wasn't going to be scarred like this, or let Snape be scarred as well. He thrashed and thrashed to break free of invisible binds. In the end, it was a tantrum that provided distraction.

He had to go crazy, he had to give it all he had. Otherwise, his own curiosity for what came next, would be just as much to blame for Snape's death as any of it. If he couldn't wake up, then he hoped he'd give himself a brain injury, snap his spine, anything to not see what he couldn't prevent from happening.

It took a second to realize he'd kicked off his shoe. He wouldn't have cared at all, except that right foot felt more firmly connected to the floor than the left. In fact, his right foot was freezing, while his left foot wasn't registering anything. The right foot told the truth. The left was still caught in a lie.

As quickly as he could, his sluggish arms pulled at his other shoe and both socks. Bare feet. Grounding. He slid the soles of his feet across the rug underneath him, looking up to see if they were onto him. Now things looked very different. Beneath an expression of grit and determination, Snape was resisting the entity pushing him against the rim of the cauldron. He was spitting curses into the air, his magic so dense above their heads that a new fog was beginning to form and react to the vapor around it. The anguish in his voice broke Harry's heart.

He ripped off his gloves and leapt to his feet. The leaden slack was gone. He moved with his natural swiftness, leaping up the platform and aiming his wand at the same time. His one-word incantation split the barrier separating his world from the vapor world, long enough for him to touch Snape. That's all he needed. In that grounding, his body conducted Snape's back into the stability of their world. The cauldron reacted in a violent spray of electrical charges. The entity attempted to grasp him, but his hands vanished through Harry's body as all three were blanketed in a haze of light and vapor.

Everything happened too fast to make a successful attempt at levitating Snape from the cauldron. Since Harry was pretty sure he couldn't destroy the thing, he held on to Snape until they both had to close their eyes against the light and pressure around them.

Harry didn't know how it happened, but when the world around them stopped thundering with atmospheric discharge, and it seemed safe to do so, he opened his eyes. He was in the cauldron with Snape. They held one another up. Water surrounded them. By-product from the vapor, he thought. They'd have to work it out later. Four victims had drowned in it. He quickly dumped his deductions while he took in Snape's soaking hair and nude body. The wizard was shaking. From both the cold and the ordeal. How much of it was real and how much of it was manipulated from them, he couldn't say. None of the victims had shown signs of sexual assault, so it might've been something that played out in their minds until they drowned. Snape looked around, bewildered, and Harry knew he had to get them out of here.

He wasted a second wondering how best to approach the confused looking wizard. If Snape remembered how Harry had done nothing but watched, he might not be so forgiving and ready to leave with him.

"I'm really sorry," Harry insisted, not knowing what else to say. Snape looked at him, his expression growing very dark and closed.

"My clothes…" His voice trailed off.

Harry gathered them with his wand and dripped from the cauldron. He offered his back to give Snape privacy, but not before insisting they get out of the water. He tried not to notice as Snape's hand's pulled on his clothes with trembling fingers. He made it a point to rush around the room barefoot, gathering all the lost objects he could find from his backpack.

"Don't put on your boots," he warned Snape. It's freezing, but that's the only thing that's true in this place."

He shoved as much back into the bag as possible, not caring that he hadn't found everything. They had to get out of there. As soon as Snape looked capable of making it to the car, Harry grabbed him and ran.

The drive back to their lodgings, took longer than either could tolerate. That particular stretch of highway was devoid of life for miles, not even a billboard. Harry drove, hurriedly putting as much distance between himself and the house as possible. For the first twenty minutes, he broke the speed limit and couldn't slow down until he saw other traffic on the highway. The sight of people, average, normal people without magic, comforted him immensely and he actually followed a Volkswagen to a thinly populated area with a diner and a bowling alley. Beside him, Snape's silence threatened to implode in on itself, and Harry promised that American coffee would snap them both out of it.

"That was a shit-all thing that happened back there. We're in shock. We're alive and there's at least six people who didn't make it. We have a right to be in shock."

He wiped his face and the sight of red smeared on his arm, reminding him of the gash on his head. Checking the other arm, the puncture wound looked nasty, but not serious. Snape looked rigid and shaken, but otherwise unharmed. Harry dismissed the thought of asking if he was injured, as soon as he thought it. Even if he only meant a random injury, he knew it would bring both their minds to that last horrible moment.

He rummaged in the back seat and found bottled water. "This will help." He offered it, but didn't look for any encouraging response from Snape. When he wasn't staring straight out the dash, as if making sure the physical world was still intact and valid, Snape's head drifted down and Harry had to avert his eyes from the sorrow he thought he saw there.

"I'm going inside, just to get us something stronger. Maybe some dinner. We're not coming back out tonight." Their hotel had no room service, not that he expected either of them to have an appetite any time soon. But he needed to get them to a safe place and sit still. Try to figure out what the hell just happened and who needs to be involved, if anyone did.

"I'll be right back out. Please don't move."

Where he thought Snape would go, he didn't know. But he couldn't describe what he saw when he tried to brave Snape's face. The wizard was so much older than he, yet his frown belonged on someone younger than Harry. His defeat belonged to confusion and vulnerability that had Harry seeing very clearly through time, at what Snape must've looked like when he was seventeen. All emotion and no protection. No wonder he'd built such a stronghold of a harsh exterior. The outside shell was all the protection anyone had. A grandness came with surviving all those years, but the torment coming from Snape, said that he was falling from that grace in real time, and there was nothing Harry could do to stop it. No one that old, should look so lost. Like he'd been relegated to his horrible adolescence and had his hard earned confidence confiscated because he could not process what had just happened to him fast enough.

He'll catch up, Harry thought. He has to. He's the strongest wizard I know.

Just then, Snape's mouth, tensed in introspection, looked more appealing than Harry could ever remember. If he hadn't thought it would be too much too soon, he would've leaned over and kissed it. He couldn't make light of this situation, but Snape's sulk was sultry. Sexy. It always had been, and why not admit it in this car, with their breathing recovering and their heads still spinning. Why couldn't he throw his arms around Snape and gush over with "I love you, I love you, I love you," said with all the intonement of an incantation meant to drive the other's pain away. If he didn't have the right to soothe the greatest man in his life, right then, when would he ever? When would it ever be appropriate?

When he noticed instant discomfort in his groin, he thought better of it and snatched another bag from the backseat. He found an extra undershirt, poured water over it outside the car, and cleaned the blood off his face. First-Aid charms wouldn't be pretty, but they would have to do. Still barefoot, he went in the diner and ordered take-out for both of them. If anyone stared, if he looked out of place, he didn't care. His mission was now to get Snape to his room and make him as comfortable as he could. Maybe he'd get a mediwizard involved, but a mental image of Snape's hand shooting out around his throat, told him, the best thing he could do at this point was not involve anyone else.

He returned to the car with plastic bags and cardboard containers. Snape still seemed remorseful, but he thanked Harry for bringing him tea instead of coffee. It was a relief to hear his voice. He didn't drink, but the act of holding it appeared to provide an equivalent purpose. In the parking lot, they looked back down the road they'd just traveled from, and attempted to recover in silence.

As soon as he started the car, he turned it off again.

"Look, I want you to know that the worst of what happened back there, will stay between us. I'll take it to my grave. You can trust that."

He hadn't meant to say it, but it needed to be spoken. If only once out loud. When he thought Snape wasn't going to acknowledge it, the older wizard turned to him slowly. His hair was still wet. He'd used a charm to dry his clothes, but he appeared to have taken no thought of his lovely hair, as usual. Why would he, Harry questioned.

His expression was less wounded and more abiding now, as if he'd reached a slightly higher level in his recovery. Hardness was gone and his gaze made Harry focus on his eyes. Harry glossed over the extra skin that advertised age, and focused instead, on dark lashes that outlined a very dramatic brow and gave definition to Snape's intense stare.

Very quietly, Snape said, "We don't know what happened there."

There was a finality in his tone that told Harry it wasn't a discussion. It was his decision. His choice.

Grateful to hear something close to strength in Snape's voice, he started the car and got them back on the road. As an alternative to driving in silence, he turned on the radio. Muggle music assaulted their ears. Snape reached over and turned it back off.

They had rooms across from one another. Harry's arms were full of food that wasn't all going to fit in the tiny refrigerator in his room. When he tried to offer a few of the bags to Snape, the other turned from him quite deliberately, and got to his door first. He'd just have to take some food to him later. That was fine.

With their backs to one another, they unlocked their rooms. It was Harry who turned to look back first. He knew he wasn't going to get any rest. He'd be checking on Snape at every hour, just to make sure this wasn't some sort of front, hiding real damage.

Snape had paused in his doorway, his back still turned to Harry. His hair remained loose around his shoulders and the sudden need to make Snape believe in his own attractiveness, sent spikes of anger up through Harry's gut. That brought heat. That brought obscene creases of flesh, and red places on pale skin. It brought the sight of Snape's wet hair plastered to his face as Harry shifted his body in the water. At the time, he hadn't wanted to think about what he was seeing, or what brushed against him. He was doing his best to be respectful and decent, but he had forever to replay that moment. When no one was looking, when he was deep in the cover of blankets and light's turned off, he would let himself have that heavy thing, rising suspended in the water, as it shifted between Snape's powerful thighs.

He closed his eyes on the thought, squeezing them the way his hand reached to squeeze the pressure from his groin. Liquid heat bloated his testicles so fast, his erection was almost painful. It was like having fluid pushed from him sooner than his full length was ready. In his jeans, there was no extra room, and instead of swelling up his stomach, his erection climbed down against his thigh. He squeezed, bending involuntarily. Bags fell to the floor as he braced himself against his door frame.

Snape took his time turning, as if he knew what he was going to see. Harry knew how bad he must've looked, from the alarm on the other's face. He couldn't help it. Something was wrong and it crippled him from hobbling inside and slamming his door like any normal person would. He gasped, feeling convulsive bursts take control of his lower body. Something with the consistency of water, poured from him, and he thought he was peeing on himself. A seizure. But it brought so much quivering sensation with it, that he knew he was ejaculating. In full view. In complete helplessness. He sank as rapture dimmed his awareness and blotted out the light. It lasted long enough for him to know that it was inexplicable and he had no power over it. He should've lost consciousness, but he was aware that Snape's hands were on him. Arms were around him. Someone else's strength was lifting him.

It was Snape who got him inside his room and kicked the door closed. Snape, who gently insisted next to Harry's ear, "It's okay. I've got you. It's just a seizure. A side effect. That thing manipulated us. It drew on our energy, now there's more in circulation than we know how to use. It's okay. It will wear off."

Harry was now beyond language. Word's shredded his throat and the humiliation of losing control of his body elicited gulping sobs. It must've been quite a display of tears and soaked jeans as Snape wrestled him to the bed, restraining him to make sure he couldn't hurt himself.

The more Harry's mind calculated how badly he looked, the angrier he got. The angrier he got, the more scenes from the basement, scenes of things he had no business seeing, fondled unwanted momentum from his gut. Seizures didn't work like this. People had no idea they were having them. This felt more like a curse, like being attacked by his own body. When he fell face down on the bed, he wanted to die there. He wanted Snape to leave him. But to his horror, his weight trapped his erection between his leg and the mattress, and his hips simply reacted to find an even greater release the best way that it could.

Snape must've thought he was fighting him. He was, but he was a slave to what his body wanted and he wrestled his arms free, repeatedly, in order to shove something, anything, between his legs. Snape's weight confined him where he lay, and it wasn't all that unwelcomed, but Harry managed to grab hold of a pillow and stuff it between himself and the bed, instead of grabbing Snape. The other could not have known what he was doing until he did it. The pillow was plush and easily crammed against him. He broke the zipper on his fly in his haste to pull himself out and position with enough accuracy to thrust as hard as he could into the soft enclosure. The first pumps were violent and his spine warned him of limitations that had him weeping and coming at the same time. He couldn't do it hard enough. He couldn't reach the hilt of the ache inside of him. His pleasure didn't resolve anything. It made it worse.

He cried and reached behind him for more contact with Snape at the same time. He opened his jean-clad legs as far as they would go, in hopes that all of Snape's weight would sink into his back, into his underwear clad ass, and help him fuck his pillow. Embarrassment had turned into something else now. Something that pushed into the man restraining him, hoping he would push back. Something that reached back, seeking fabric, seeking buttons, zippers, and any skin it could get its hands on. Some part of him knew that their relationship was never going to recover from this, but that was fucked anyway and maybe he desrved it for witnessing what he'd seen. Maybe this was punishment for sitting there watching Snape stripped to his core. For seeing things no friend should see, let alone secretly like.

"Please," he heard himself beg. He sounded hysterical to his own ears. Even suicidal. This wasn't him. He had never needed sex this strongly in his life. He didn't have time to explain that he was a good person. He had morals. He'd only ever had sex with two girls, and both times he'd given in to the pressure of living up to being Harry Potter the hero. He hadn't gotten much out of it, but it made those girls happy. The idea of being with a man, easily overwhelmed him, so he didn't make himself think about it. But right now, he knew it was about humiliation and avoiding having to show so much to another person. Hadn't Snape shown him exactly what he wanted to see? How dare he think he had a right to hold anything back. If Snape had to give up so much, then maybe it was fucking justice that had Harry squirming under him to be opened and eaten like that.  
What? That never happened. That NEVER happened.

_But you wanted it to. You couldn't stop with seeing all that terrain of white ass. Once you saw it, you wanted it opened. You wanted those black fingers inside, up to the knuckles. Once you had it open, you wanted your teacher vibrating on a tongue that played him like a tuning fork. You wanted all the juices. Tears, saliva, semen. That's what happens when you keep from touching the thing you want most, for years. You wanted the monster to do what you couldn't do._

There was no point in denying it, but that was just a fantasy and it was unfair to hold him to any standard while this was happening. Behind him, Snape's heat went away and it felt like such total rejection, that Harry screamed into his pillow. He rose up, twisted, and went straight for Snape's belt.

"Harry, no. I can't let you."

He wouldn't let go. He looked up into Snape's face and raged, "Why not? I saw you. I saw every thing I had no right to see. Do it. Do it. Please. You have to."

Life and death waged war on Snape's face. Judging by what Harry held in his hand, what Snape could not get him to let go of, Snape had to be in as much pain as him. His distended organ felt artificial in its tubular firmness. Only the pulse told Harry that it was real and that he knew where he wanted it.

It was a decision made in their stare. Right or wrong, they were too far gone to leave this meeting ground. There was no foreplay. No preparation. Only savage heat and both were willing to put up with surface pain to get to subterranean pleasure. Harry's jeans were yanked down his hips and pulled from his ass so fast, they split at the inseam. Snape lifted him and pushed his legs open wide enough to tear them the rest of the way. He could've moved Harry's underwear aside, but enjoyed the way it tore like tissue paper in his fist. They both did.

Eyes closed, Harry anticipated being entered. His arms shook to hold up his weight. This was the moment. He didn't want it soft and tender, he wanted it fast, so that he couldn't back out. At the first press, suspense gurgled in the back of his throat. The shape of the thing, asking for entrance, caused every muscle to recoil. There was something about such wide, fleshy dome squeezing itself into bullet roundness, into something many times smaller than its head, that had Harry gasping as it nudged him and he tried to keep his body in place. Snape held him and Harry was grateful to feel him curved against his back. He could not have stayed on the bed without being anchored beneath the mass of the heavier man.

It burned, but it went in. With it, came an influx of natural, chemical painkillers that tricked his body into believing it was in heaven and that this was perfectly natural. Jarring thrusts, that slid through his ballooned rectum and rocked his whole body, said otherwise. This was completely foreign to his body and he knew it, but it was what the agony behind his testicles wanted and they were calling the shots at the moment. He wept as he rode Snape's strength driving through him, and clutched his penis to keep it from flopping painfully at the same time.

Through the haze of his climaxes, Harry retained details that would haunt him later. The way the headboard hit the wall, must've disturbed their neighbors. The way the bedside lamp vibrated its way over the edge of the table and crashed to the floor, must've meant that excessive energy was being used. To him, it was all a muscular arch that vaulted him into another dimension of absorption, no matter what it did to his body. It filled him, and that's all that mattered. If there were spots of red, they weren't important enough to notice.

And it didn't just happen once. It happened as many times as they could do it. There was never a pause. There was never a break. That kind of energy demanded a total emptying of themselves until Snape collapsed on top of him and they lay in their own exertions. Harry had stopped crying as hard, but tears continued to flow. Not from pain, but from loving the feel of kisses placed on his back. This man, the wizard of his dreams, was expressing his gratitude.

He felt an overwhelming need to tell Snape that he was sorry. So he mumbled it into his pillow. Sorry for everything. Sorry for seeing all the things he shouldn't have seen. Sorry for having thoughts so horrible that they were pulled from his mind and used to hurt Snape. Sorry for being a horrible lay. A lousy virgin where men were concerned. Sorry for never having done this before, and choosing to keep it a secret. If he'd had the presence of mind to tell him, he knew that Snape might have found the strength to resist it. The Professor he remembered would've viewed such an omission of information as something akin to betrayal. It would've been too important to Snape. Sorry for everything.

Snape's hair trailed his shoulder, introducing cool strands to Harry's burning skin. His gentle kisses told Harry to shut up. The worst was over.

"I knew," he said, behind his ear. "I knew before I laid one hand on you."

* * *

A/N: If you'd like for me to see your comments, feel free to PM me. Thanks! :-)

* * *

This is a comment from a reader, I'm only posting it because I want to clear up any misunderstanding about racism. The poster deleted their comment before I could reach out to them. Feel free to skip.

**From DragonCove719** (comment was deleted by poster, but I'm (Bridgette) reposting to clear up some confusion).

Hey,  
Just wanted to say that while the premise was interesting, I think that making your rapist explicitly black was, in all honestly, incredibly insidious. Especially with your descriptions. There was no way to read this without you bribing it back to race, over and over again. Also, it felt like you were describing them as a racist caricature from the 40s, which makes it even worse! Do you not realize how many times black men have been murdered because they were accused of being a sexual threat to white women? You literally reiterated the same garbage propaganda! Word for word! Except this time it's with a man, obviously.  
Ugh, anyways I know your feelings are probably really hurt right now, and that's valid, but hurt feelings are not as important as somebody else's life, so I reported this fic. I NEVER report fics, but I feel like this one is more insidious in nature. More likely to actually get someone seriously hurt or injured.

This is targeting an already oppressed people, using a method that murdering lynchers did to justify their actions not even 50 years ago. I'm going to assume you are just an ignorant soul who doesn't understand better, but let me tell you, if you honestly see black people like this I WILL hold you accountable for it, mark my words.

This fic has been reported to the ao3 staff for review for extreme racism and hate speech.

**From me: **

You have severely misunderstood this story. The black man represents uninhibited desire, something no one is comfortable with, but everyone has to deal with. He's meant to be temptation incarnate. Your insecurities have you seeing him in this story as something else. Real life politics have no place in my fiction. I can't stomach real racism. I can't help how you've chosen to view this, but it is a choice. The woman who requested this fic was enamored of that dark skin and wanted me to make use of it, not avoid it, not pretend that the man in the photo was not shiny slick with bold pigmentation. I cast non-blacks as villains, I think it's ok if I cast a black man as one also.

So, because of real life atrocities, I can't fantasize about a black man in a villainous role? For starters, I'm black, and your comment involves the same racist paranoia that would've kept me from writing my most beloved character, because he's white. You have defensive lenses on, and you're only seeing the worst things that have happened in history when you read this story, not how the story was meant to be read.

The story is about a delicious black man so powerfully, sexually undeniable, that these two fall victim due to their own inhibitions. It's not racism just because people of a certain color do different things. I write noncon. Sometimes my noncon characters will be a variety of races. To me, racism is about mistreating someone because of their race/color. The black man is never mistreated, and he gives the others exactly what they want but are ashamed of. Please reconsider your viewpoint. Not for me, for yourself. That has got to be a ton of pain you're walking around with, for no good reason. The fact that you took actions against me and this story, means that your fears have you lashing out against innocent people because you don't fully understand. Next time, simply see where the author's head is at, before you assume the worst. Peace to you.


	2. Night Guest

It took two days before they could talk about it. The Ministry was waiting on their report and neither had processed the experience well enough to write it out. When the prospect of hiding out in their rooms lost its appeal, Snape suggested they write dummy reports, just similar enough to appease the head of the department.

"We can always update them when we're ready to continue."

He sipped his tea. His suggestion belied his calm demeanor. It wasn't like him to back down from anything, and Harry suspected he was doing it for Harry's safety, not his own.

They were seated in a sports bar, avoiding wall mounted televisions and noonday rush hour, by taking refuge in a corner booth on the second level. Only themselves, and a mother of two, occupied the second story seating area. It was relatively quiet, with Snape having disabled the televisions temporarily, so that no one wanted to sit up there. The place served decent hot sandwiches and the chatter below concealed their conversation. Both of them liked the arched window that allowed them to see across the street to their hotel. If they needed to run back, to take shelter for any reason, the view reassured them. Both were a bit shell-shocked after the other day. After having control of their behavior wrested from them.

Snape's idea didn't sit right with Harry. "We owe the Ministry a solved case. We owe any potential victims, safety."

"And we'll come back when we have a better grasp on things. Right now, you and I barely made it out alive. Demons don't exactly respect the Ministry's schedule."

Even joking, Harry didn't like the use of that word. Demon. It was too misunderstood. In Asian cultures it's origins were derived from 'genius.' One who does not think within the parameters of others, but excels beyond it. In Western cultures, it meant pure, uncompromizing evil. Here in America, it caused too many problems in an already superstitious culture.

Most spirits, viewed as malevolent, had no evil agendas and were every bit as fallible as humans. But that made no difference, say, if you were an ear of corn, and aware enough to fear the day your life would be chopped from under you and fed to the family who needed it to live. No matter how kind that family was, they might be your evil enemy, if you looked at it that way. Things that needed to eat human energy, were sometimes called demons. But to them, they were simply a hungrier, differently evolved life-form.

No one thinks the life of a plant matters unless the plant is big enough to make its own statement, to boast of its own importance. Trees were a good example. Vegetarians could eat corn all day. Let a thousand year-old California Red Wood become edible, and see how fast activists swarm to erect anti-tree eating laws. How strongly a life-form impacts human awareness, was what granted it survival in the human world. Humans could be demons to other life-forms who can't live in their presence. No one got out of taking life in order to live. No one.

The analogy only went so far. Demonizing something you didn't understand, was about the worst thing you could do to yourself. You took your power and assigned it to something that you thought was greater than yourself. You left yourself powerless, and then had a real reason to be afraid. Just like Snape was doing.

Harry blurted, "It's not a demon, and it's certainly not more powerful than we are. Not if we don't give it that power."

"The thing is too strong, and it's too much to ask of ourselves to wrap this up over night."

"You and I both know we're never coming back here. Not for this. We need to decide what really happened."

Snape pointed his nose at him. His tone was dour. "We'll never know what happened. We need to decide how best to seal off the portal. I'm going to suggest a barrier around the entire estate and an olfactory mirage to make sure no one is tempted to walk in that direction. Few people will follow the stench of decay. It will make them too nauseated. They'll turn back. That should do until we figure this out and return."

"We're never coming back," Harry stated.

Snape relented. "That too, is an option."

Harry gritted his jaw. "No it isn't. Why is it okay with you to leave that portal open? More people will die."

"Because the one person I'm concerned about, needs to stay alive and as long as we keep clear of that hell hole, you will be quite safe."

The declaration caused Harry to look down at his reflection in the table. It had the brutalizing effect of forcing several meanings on him. At once, he understood that Snape was hiding real trauma in his memories of the event, and Harry's own life had irrevocably jumped course the day he spread for this man. It was a painful transition to acknowledge. He hadn't known who he was beneath Snape, and the fact that he would've sold his mother to do what they'd done, now left him stranded in the light of day with nothing but the mercy of Snape's lack of judgment.

They hadn't done it since. The absence of sudden, reckless passion, drove home to Harry that they were still being toyed with. _It_ controlled them and wanted them to know it. _It_ could take over their libidos again whenever it wanted to and have them behaving like beasts in this very bar. That was Harry's fear, anyway. That's why they didn't want to stray from the hotel.

In truth, he didn't believe he could have sex like that again if he wanted to. The day after, he could barely move and had to force himself to walk around in the privacy of his room, to work out the soreness. He was sure there must've been some damage and, to his shame, took pink stomach tablets to keep from making matters worse. He didn't plan on eating much for the next two weeks. He hoped to be healed by then.

Snape's response hit home. Did he really want more of that? Of what they almost hadn't survived? Hadn't they been humiliated enough?

The sexual component between them, threw his mind out of gear before he even got started thinking about it. While moments afterwords had seemed real and nice, it was all based on a cursed cauldron. That meant everything leading up to those exquisite kisses on his back, could not be trusted. He hadn't known who this man was, touching him so gently after all that sticky mess, but he wasn't going to demand more of him. They were both simply doing what it took to get past the last forty-eight hours.

Snape added, "You and I have figured out that no one gets hurt who doesn't go looking for trouble. If someone ends up in that pot, they will have had plenty of warning and ignored every opportunity to turn back. They will have scripted their own fate and that is not for us to decide."

Harry simmered. It wasn't about deciding anyone's fate. It was about using this moment to do the right thing. Muggles needed them to figure this out. What was magic for, if it couldn't be of any help in a situation like this.

"I'm just saying, muggles are helpless. We can't do anything about world disasters. We can't bring killers to justice, we can't stop homelessness or hunger, but right now, we are the only two people presented with something that we might be able to fix, if we just focus on fixing it."

Snape did him the courtesy of remaining quiet. Displeased, but quiet.

"It's like the little girl who falls in the well, and it takes firemen to get her out, and it's a miracle that she survived being down there. Even people with magic, don't always listen to their instincts, their guidance. If I was that parent, I would just want to know why someone couldn't have covered up the damn hole when they abandoned it in the first place. Humanity needs us to be the kind of wizards who make sure no one can fall in abandoned wells. Or at least attach something that lets them climb back out. I can't leave, knowing the kind of power that witch left running lose in this world. Muggles don't stand a chance."

Something changed behind Snape's humorless reflection. His mouth opened on thoughts he didn't seem ready to speak, but were considering them nonetheless.

Harry used the moment to lay down his last card. "We have to go back."

Snape's eyelids lowered. Just for a second. Just long enough to remind Harry how dark and full his lashes were, when one wasn't distracted by the scowl. When Snape looked up, he pinned Harry with dagger-tipped threat.

"We will go back with one goal, and one goal only. To fill the pot with a mixture of concrete and resin of the most enduring substances we can find. As long as it is unactivated, the mixture might set. No one can then enter the cauldron, nor read the incantation. There is no guarantee this will work, but as you say, it's better than leaving an empty hole for another ignorant bypasser to fall in."

It was a win. And it let Harry breathe a sigh of relief. But even as one exhale left, the next breath of anxiety took up where the other left off.

That night, he tried to work on his report. His laptop wasn't working, but the Ministry-appointed tablet was. He wrote with a digital pen, and watched his letters form on the screen as well as the paper in his notebook. His report was being recorded in two places. He was careful not to submit it, only to see how much of his thoughts he could organize into a coherent recount of what happened. He knew that Snape was busy negotiating with the Ministry for the resources he needed.

There was a time when his plan would've seen him collecting ingredients to create the mixture he spoke of. He would've had to apparate to various locations, and back and forth to the brewing laboratory that he kept in Scotland. For the quantities needed, that process might've taken weeks. But now with Ministry credentials, he could place his order. A team of brewers were at his disposal. Fifty-five thousand litres of whatever he needed, could be produced in record time, in theory. Provided the product itself didn't require a certain amount of processing time.

Harry knew this wasn't just an industrial process taking place. There would be spells and potions to refine it, to help it stand up to whatever magic protected the cauldron. When the mixture was ready, Snape could retrieve it using projection relocation, and never have to lay a hand on it himself.

Harry wrote what he could. He left out all the parts about the sexual phenomena, saved it, and shut it down. Leaning back in his bed, he appreciated the hotel staff acting quickly on his request for clean sheets. He'd cleaned the others up the best that he could. At least, the blood stains weren't visible by the time they were changed. Even now, that detail turned his cheeks scarlet and he wanted to kick himself for even letting his mind go back to it.

He brought his hands to his face and messaged his exhaustion down to bearable levels. Why was it so hard to simply turn out the lights and go to sleep? Especially when he was so tired. There'd been a time when sleep was his best friend. Now it was like saying good-bye to life, letting it blink out, and not being sure he was going to return. He'd done an okay job so far, of not having nightmares, but he'd learned a trick to help with that, long ago. If something frightened him, something he didn't want to see in his dreams, he told himself, "If I dream about this horrible thing," he stated what it was. It changed. For years it was Voldemort. Then his neighbors killing each other. "Then I will also have lucid dreams of visiting with my mother. And Sirius. And my dad. And I'll remember them."

Those three subjects were so positive to him, that mere thoughts of them acted like a force field against such nightmares. While he rarely woke up remembering them, he never had bad dreams when he used this little method. Not bad enough to bother him, anyway.

Sometime in the night, he resurfaced to check the room. It was normal for him to wake up and make sure his surroundings were still there. Children did it all the time. Being young, they were not as committed to the physical world as adults, and knew things could change when no one was looking. Usually, all it took was a good stretch, rolling over, and he'd fall back asleep. But when he shifted onto his other side and let his arm extend to the other side of the bed, the bulk next to him moved.

His eyes opened. It was big under the covers. It was warm. Breathing. His hand was still on it, lingering there to make sure this wasn't a dream. Someone's back was to him. His hand recoiled and his mind raced to break through the barrier of fear.

He could hear his own breathing, and that never happened in dreams. He was that scared. Demanding logic, he reached for something that made sense. Anything.

"Snape?"

After the other day, Snape's presence in his bed, was more appropriate than anyone's, yet highly unlikely.

With eyes adjusted to the dark, Harry watched shoulders move in response to him. The bulk rolled, distributing its mass and jarring the entire bed. As it rolled to face him, he prayed that it was Snape, and not the man from the cauldron. His heart stuck. An arm came out of the covers, pulling them down to reveal a full head of dark hair and Snape's slack profile as he slowly turned to face Harry.

There was no sigh of relief. There was no amazement that Snape could be so forthcoming in his interest of Harry. If anything, there was greater confusion. It caused him to debate whether or not he had a right to ask, "What are you doing here?" But in that same moment, his instincts said to look closer. Snape was staring at him. His pupils gave back nothing and his skin didn't look right.

"Are you okay?" Maybe he had a nightmare. Maybe he just didn't want to sleep alone.

Harry forced himself to reach out and touch him. That's what you did, didn't you? When you were trying to prove you cared about someone. No matter how uncomfortable the moment was. He'd missed his chance in the car. But now, in the dark, maybe Snape would let him get away with it.

Before the tips of his fingers made it to Snape's face, his wrist was grabbed and the thing was climbing on top of him. Its body moved like a shadow across him, swiftly blocking out all else. Harry struggled in the sheets. Pain and pressure regaled the fact that this was no dream. The body on top of him was too heavy to throw off and too strong to free his arms. His wand lay directly beneath his pillow, but he couldn't reach it. Something wet dripped down on him. At first he thought Snape was spitting on him, but then he realized he was soaking wet and water, or something, dripped from his hair.

It happened so much faster than the human brain could measure. In that dark place, with Snape's breath steaming into his face, his head coming closer, and the entire bearing of his torso working to hold Harry down, their lips touched. In that contact, he put something into Harry's mouth that took them back to the cauldron. Harry's legs stopped kicking, stopped trapping him further in the sheets. Snape's jaws insisted that he have this, and for a moment, Harry was back in school, doing his best to be obedient. He opened his mouth and let his teacher go as deeply as he wanted. He tasted back, and felt his penis balloon into instant arousal. It was the cauldron all over again, and he knew better than to fight it. This was just going to get worse if he didn't go along with it. Something told him to fight, to be worried that Snape wasn't fighting. But he had no strength to fight. Even wet and clothed, Snape's body felt too good. It started out uncomfortable, but body heat permeated from Snape's nightclothes and pushed into Harry's shirt and shorts. Harry's legs loosened from the sheets and he let them spread for the man on top of him. Forgetting his wand, he sought instead, the dense warmth that moved against him and began shedding his clothes.

Only the feel of it mattered. Only the broad pelvis and grazing thighs lifting him off the mattress, mattered. The fact that Snape's body felt different, more compact and muscular, didn't faze him. Harry was far too gone to question how his clothes peeled away so easily, as if they were never there. How his skin glistened so darkly, in a room without lights, and why images of the bald, black man kept inserting itself into their hectic lovemaking. There were seconds when he felt like he was kissing the bald man instead of Snape. Those lips seemed extra thick and capable of sucking in his in a way that dominated Harry's ability to deny them anything. Large, deft hands, left magic on his body wherever they touched. All of Harry opened to him. All of Harry welcomed what pressed its way into him. Something told him it wasn't all going to fit. It couldn't. But this was magic, and when something felt that good, physics could be ignored.

Heroin, could not come close to the high traveling up his spine, through his rectum. It filled his stomach. Internal muscles gripped the thing sliding through them, and relayed its energy to the tips of his fingers. That same energy poured out the top of his head. His muscles were so relaxed now, so gelatinous under the hands of his new lover, he didn't dare try to resist it. Every ounce of dignity shredded under thrusts that mounted in power and shook him to an extreme pace and speed that was only tolerable under the influence of a violent orgasm.

When it was over, it was really over. He knew it. When it was over, it released him. It let him go. His mind snapped back to reality. The realization was more painful than the hallucination itself. He hurt, not just from sore muscles, forced to deliver a series of climaxes that made him wish they would stop, but internal pain. Snape was gone. The bald man was gone, yet something had been inside of him, and he was still hurting from it.

He reached for the light and his wand at the same time. It didn't occur to him to make a lumos. None of the right things were occurring to him at the moment. He didn't even know if his rape had been real or imaginary. He didn't know if Snape had been there or not. He was shaking as he got out of bed and found his shorts. His room didn't look any different. The bed didn't look any different. The other side of it looked untouched. But that was a lie. The sexual adrenaline still streaking through his body, told him not to believe anything that looked normal.

Carefully, he willed his feet to move to the other side of the bed. He wanted to be quick. He wanted to rip the covers back and face whatever waited for him. But trembles wouldn't let him. So slowly, he pulled on the sheets. There, on wrinkled white fabric, water stains soaked from pillow to foot. The mattress was so drenched, so compressed, that water actually pooled where the heaviest parts of a body had been.

The sight hurt him more than his injuries. He couldn't scream. It wasn't like in the movies where people had the energy to scream behind all their terror. All he could do was fight to hold back as much of his panic as possible. His tears blinded him, but he didn't break down. There was no time for that. He ran for Snape's room. He didn't bother to knock. He blasted the door open with his wand and ran straight for the bed. Snape's nightly wards would've kept anyone else out but Harry. They allowed for him, but the ones around the bed stung and Harry couldn't just use his wand to attack the covers. He held it out, though, and used a non-threatening charm to fold the covers back.

Snape was already stirring, already sitting up from the disturbance. His wand was in his hand before his eyes could see clearly. It was still dark out, and Harry brandishing his wand, having forced his door open, called for utmost caution. He squinted and used an imperceptible flick to turn on the light.

"Harry?"

Harry didn't have to answer, for him to know that he couldn't. The sight of him, livid and shaking, half naked and disheveled, spoke for him. The wand pointing at him, couldn't hold still. It couldn't maintain an aim if it wanted to. Harry looked positively brutalized. Discolored ruptures marred his face and arms. The cut on his head had reopened. When he tried to speak, only sobs came out.

Snape leaned towards him. "Tell me what happened."

So much conflict leapt across the younger man's face, so much anger that could not be corralled into rational words. Snape's discernment scanned him, and came to the unutterable conclusion that there was only one thing he could do. The moment called for nothing else. He left his bed, stood, and stepped around Harry's wand. The other pulled away, but he was assertive and deliberate when he pulled Harry against him. It was a decision that could not be made by the one in grief. It had to be made by the one observing such an imbalance of emotions. He would not let him go, and restrained him until the fight left Harry. The young man wrapped his arms around Snape's waist and let his head take shelter on his chest.

Snape held him until the trembling stopped.

They waited a week before going back to the house. They hadn't intended to wait that long, but Harry kept losing his nerve, and Snape wasn't about to rush him. During that time, they used what they knew to dig further into the research. His tablet accessed Ministry files, but found more during a genealogy check on Anna Maybell Karrington. She might've learned what she knew from a master, a great aunt, or even her mother. Witches tended to pass information onto their daughters in secret. Especially Christian witches. It didn't make sense to return to the house until they got word that the mixture was ready.

Snape made more attempts to discourage him. "I can get the mixture into the cauldron by myself. We've seen that nothing happens unless it's activated."

Harry looked up from his notes. "I can't let you go there alone. And I can't let anyone else get involved with this. Especially now that we know this thing can come after us."

"We don't know that. It might've been a dream."

"I told you, it wasn't a dream."

"Not in the conventional sense, I agree. But it wasn't physical."

Harry bit down his frustration. He had very little of the physical evidence to prove that it was real. He still had bruises, but his sheets were clear of water and other other clues. If he had to hear Snape suggest that he could've possibly done that to himself in his sleep, or opened his older injuries by himself, he was going to walk out.

They were using Snape's room. Harry had moved in for the time being. He felt safer there, and Snape had insisted. "I can be alert. If I see that a dream is going awry, I can wake you. If there is physical phenomenon, I can help you fight it."

Harry didn't want to go back to the house. He had to. The experience told him that he was the connective link in all of this, not Snape. His ability to see between worlds, gave that thing access to both of them. What if they hadn't just activated the cauldron, but given that thing a way out? He couldn't take a chance on it doing this to other people.

In the middle of reading down a list of baptism records from a century ago, a gold marquee slipped across his screen. It was an alert. The mixture was ready. Snape could project it into their location at any time. He knew the access charms.

They checked their equipment and packed accordingly. Harry made sure there were extra clothes and shoes in the car in case they had to leave them behind. Snape insisted on driving and they rehearsed their plan. Waste no time. Use the same wards as before. Set up an Eye-Raid camera. It was an auror device that could feed real-time imaging to their tablets and wands from any distance. A spy camera. Manifest the mixture. It would arrive in a drum. They could levitate it into place. Fill the cauldron to its rim. Accelerate the setting process. Leave. Don't hang around. Use the camera to see if the mixture held.

When they pulled up in front of the house, it took another fifteen minutes to make his body get out. He was already contaminated with this place. What if being there was literally cementing the deal? What if it didn't work and he could never get rid of this thing? A touch on his arm, and the overload of insecure ramblings stopped. Snape, beside him, assured him that he wasn't going into this alone.

"Wait here. Let me have a look, and I'll call you, just to make sure everything is exactly as we left it."

That sounded practical on the surface. After all, they had disturbed something. But Harry wasn't falling for it. He undid his safety belt. "No, I'm ready. Let's go."

He knew that Snape would've tricked him. If he could, he'd bound to the basement while Harry waited like some kind of wallflower in the car, hastily set up the camera, pour the mixture, and be back before Harry could even suspect what he'd done. After everything that's happened, neither one of them could get away with believing it was going to be that simple. He couldn't leave this place without making sure they put this presence to rest.

Nothing appeared to have changed inside the house. This time they were reluctant to go into the kitchen. Snape started that way, but Harry stayed by the door. Snape turned back to him.

"We know what's down there. What if… What if what we need is up here?"

Snape's expression said clearly this was not what they'd planned.

"She created it. The portal. We haven't tried talking to her. We should've visited her grave."

He saw Snape's frown darken, and added. "She can end this. Anna Karrington obviously created what she needed. A lover. Someone her parents would not have approved of. That thing down there, is still expecting her to come to him. She's gone, and it doesn't know that. What if I can make contact with her? Get her to see that her creation needs to be put to rest. What if I can reach out to her? Don't you think it's strange that there haven't been any ghosts?"

"That thing downstairs is enough of a specter for anyone. The magic that controls it is too dominating for your average lost soul."

"Exactly. Concrete and resin isn't going to be enough, no matter what spells we put around it. We need to bring her back and get her to call it off. We don't have to touch the cauldron."

"How do you propose we accomplish that? You've never deliberately gone after a spirit before."

"I know, but I feel like she's broadcasting. She's here. She has to be. But that thing has a much stronger signal. It's broadcasting over every trace of anyone who has ever lived in this house."

He thought about it, feeling Snape's eyes on him. "I need to find her." He turned to the stairs on his right. "I want to find her room. Her energy would be strongest there."

"Harry." There was hardness in Snape's voice. "This is not what we agreed. Are you under the influence of the entity already?"

Harry turned on the second step. "Are you? You're ready to get down there so quick. Maybe that was our first mistake. We need to dig around in her room. Her family left everything here. We need her clothes, her jewelry, her phone. We need to make a connection. Get her on our side, before we barge back down there thinking we can control anything. She dominates this house, through him. That was her guardian. If he's killing, then she's told him to. Only she can call him off."

Before he could turn around, Snape asked. "How did she die, again?"

He knew perfectly well how she died. In the cauldron. Harry waited.

Snape answered his own question. "She drowned. It was labeled a suicide. Why would someone who had designs on killing themselves, leave instructions to kill anyone else?"

He wanted Harry to think it through.

Instead of answering, Harry took another step up. He looked up towards the next floor as if someone were calling him, then back at Snape. "That's what I have to figure out."

"Anna was not a very nice person, Harry. If she brought harm to others, she's not going to make an exception for you."

He knew this was true, and the statement got under his skin. He was so tired, and listening to Snape only made him want to give up. But there wouldn't be any peace for him if he did that. He couldn't sleep in Snape's bed forever. He had to go home sometime. And that thing would be right there. Maybe not right away, but eventually.

He paused, took a moment to run his hands down his face and lean against the wall behind him. He folded his arms and said very calmly. "I know. It's risky. But I'm fairly sure I can get her to talk to me."

Snape joined him on the stairs. "Why are you so sure now, when you didn't even consider it before?"

He hesitated. "Because this is her house. We should've come to her first. It was bad manners to go tampering with her things without asking permission. I understand that now. And maybe that's why everyone else died. They didn't respect her. They didn't respect what she could do. Once I acknowledge her ability, she'll listen to me. She'll come through."

Snape was already shaking his head. "At what cost? What reason does she have to listen to you?"

"I have something she might find useful."

"And what is that?"

He hoped his shrug didn't appear cocky. "A body."

He turned and leapt the rest of the way up, not waiting to get an earful from Snape's reddening face. Behind him, curses hissed out into the dark. He could practically see the sparks Snape's foul language gave off. He could certainly feel it. He thought he'd gotten away with his flippant response, but he felt himself caught by the arm and pushed into a wall.

Spittle sprayed his face as Snape leaned close. "Tell me that you are not going to offer your body to this thing. Has this ordeal damaged whatever working parts your brain has kept in motion?"

He couldn't get his shirt out of Snape's fists. "Not him. Her."

Now he saw Snape's teeth. "What's the difference?"

"It's all I have to bargain with. It's all the living has to bargain with. And it's all that someone like her wants."

"She'll put you back in that cauldron. Is that what you want?"

Snape's hold was starting to hurt. He shook Harry. "Is that what you want? Look at me and tell me you did not bring me back here just to let that wretched bitch have a fling with her genie in a kettle."

He brought his thick index finger up to Harry's nose. "I can't protect your body if you won't. You tell me right now, you have no intentions of letting her inside you. She can't have life. She had her chance. You don't owe her anything."

Both of Harry's hands clung to the fist clutching his shirt. "I think she had a horrible life. Anyone who has to invent a lover, isn't getting what they need from this world."

"And that is none of our business. If you let her in, she will always have a way in. This will follow you home."

"The minute I used a pentagram to protect you, it was always going to follow me home. Your bare skin connected my magic to hers. That thing used you, for me. Not her. It saw my secrets and it did what I couldn't do. I violated you, not her. Not him. That's what she's spelled it to do. To be able to give anyone who steps into that cauldron, exactly what their deepest fantasies are asking for."

Now the grip loosened. "Harry, you can't take the blame for this. How do you know my own secrets didn't play a part in this? You have to forgive yourself for seeing what you saw. She'll use it against you."

Heat spread behind Harry's eyes, making him sniff. "Nobody has the right to do that to you. Not even me. Especially not me. You're the strongest, bravest wizard I know. The least I can do is put myself in your place, if it'll stop all this killing. I deserve it."

Snape's hand left his shirt, and cupped his face. "No you don't. It won't stop the killing. She's hungry for power. You'll only make her stronger. If you do this… If you allow her possession of your body, she'll have that thing using you whenever she wants. You could be attacked every night, for the rest of your life, or however long she allows you to live. What will you do then?"

Harry closed his eyes and smiled through the pain. When he opened them, he had an answer.

"I'll let it. I'll let her. I can't live for very long, being torn apart like that. So she'll kill me. But at least that way, everyone else is safe."

Snape's hands fell away. His mouth hung open and he squinted through the meaning of Harry's words.

Harry pushed himself off the wall. You fill the pot. I lure her into me. She has no where else to go. I'm the last victim."

He backed away, turning. Snape's voice trailed after him. "Are you still trying to die in the forest, Harry? You feel so guilty that you survived, when so many didn't, that you've found another way to die for the masses. Is there no limit to what your ego tells you that you must suffer?"

Harry stopped, but didn't turn around. He appeared to think better of it, and kept going. With the other wizard on his heels, he searched each room for lingering resonance with the dead. When they'd walked the house and he was left dumbfounded, he got a flash of inspiration. He bent down and started taking off his shoes.

He told Snape, "Don't take off yours until you get to the cauldron. I have to open myself up to her."

While unlacing, it occurred to him that the idea had come in much the same manner as the cake had, a week ago. That chocolate icing had been too dark, too glossy, and every bit as seductive as the entity whose skin it represented. Half symbolic premonition, half hidden desire, the imagery was a language that told him far more about his sexual appetite than any of his real experiences so far. He had to pay extra attention to the images and sensations in his mind. Some were random, and evidently some were not.

Now standing barefoot on the filthy carpet, there was only the slightest reserve about stepping on something he couldn't see. He asked Snape to make the illumination brighter, and proceeded to walk in the direction where the draft was coldest on his feet.

Now that he was open to it, he really could feel something in the heels of his feet. Those little bones acted like tuning forks, sending empty static through his Tibia. Only the static wasn't empty. It was encoded. The shiver he felt, wasn't just a shiver. It was information. He was heading in the right direction. Snape was right. People were filled with bodily clues that signaled which choice to make at every turn. But in a world desensitized by the value of struggle, of being strong, of coping with pain, all those subtleties could easily be ignored. One was taught to listen to reason, not their bodies.

His cold feet led him to what he'd thought was a closet. Dusty coats, moth-eaten tweed and mildewed leather, hung in his face. He raised his wand and parted them. On the other side, was a small room. He brightened his light before entering. The bed was made, and it's hand-painted frame matched a set of pink drawers. It was a lady's make-up table with a vanity. Make-up and brushes lined up on a mirrored tray. Fraying house shoes sat alongside sneakers at the foot of the bed. Eighty's pop stars lined the walls in silver duct tape. He recognized the era of clothing, if not the bands themselves. Stuffed dolls, collectibles, sat on the length of the bed with their backs to the wall. Their lifeless eyes stared out into the room and he supposed that someone who loved Anna, must've arranged everything in its perfect place, knowing full well that she wasn't coming back from the morgue.

He knew this was her room. A series of baby paraphernalia ran through his mind. Pink and yellow unicorns on a mobile, balloons on wallpaper, and frilly dresses, the kind mothers loved to have their newborn daughters take pictures in. As soon as he stepped through the coats and into the room, he got it. The paint was peeling and the boarder was gone, but behind the last layer of paint, he saw a strip of color. A half balloon. It appeared in other places, now that his eyes were adjusting to them. Whomever had decorated the room, painted right over the old wallpaper when it wouldn't come off. This was Anna's nursery as a baby. It became her room as a teen. And with a heavy feeling in his chest, he realized it must've been her room as a thirty year-old woman who couldn't take her life anymore.

Behind him, he heard Snape enter. He charmed the lamp by the bed to hold some light. He told Snape. "Look for a diary. A hiding place."

He hadn't seen a diary in his mind, but it came out of his mouth as if he were sure. He sounded certain, even to himself. What else would a young witch use, when she felt she couldn't grow up. With more light, he saw the crosses over her bed. Three of them, for the Holy Trinity itself. He didn't know a lot about Christianity, but he knew the basics. The biggest one bore the image of that naked and tortured scapegoat. That person, who ever he was, died over a prophecy. That much he remembered. He saw the bible on her pillow, and looked back up. She must've lain in this room every night and contemplated the image.

As Snape rummaged around him, he drew his wand under the ceiling, looking for evidence of spells. Even if she hadn't practiced any in her room, if she'd lain in bed and thought them, he might see traces that a powerful witch could leave behind. He used a filtering charm to show where magic was used. He scanned from one end of the room to the other, which was only about ten feet. There were a lot of water spots from old leaks. A lot of patchwork plaster, and a few posters. One of the items fastened to the ceiling, wasn't a poster, it was a scarf. Sheer purple with gold, Hindu patterns on it. An act of rebellion. The things he found floating near the ceiling, were ephemeral dream spells. Harmless. She obviously valued her dreams and used magic to enhance them. That meant she must've kept a dream journal, at least. Whomever cleaned this room, and left it in such a tidy state, probably took it, out of a concern for discretion. And left a bible in its place.

He didn't mean to put a narrative to her story, but he couldn't help it. She wasn't talking fast enough, or loudly enough for him. So he decided to talk to her.

"Anna, I'm Harry. Harry Potter." He heard Snape's commotion stop.

"And this is my friend Snape. You know us from last week." If Snape thought this was a bad idea, and Harry sensed he did, he held his tongue.

"I understand now that we were trespassing. We should've asked for your permission."

The light flickered, but that's all it did. He tried to get to the point, and remain respectful at the same time.

"We know that you left this world with secrets. We know that you were, and still are, a fantastic witch. You created a portal, with a being, who's still alive and active to this day. That demonstrates incredible power. That must've made you the strongest magical person here."

He was trying to use words that would appeal to her pride. The small room spoke of someone who wasn't what she seemed. Someone very capable, in the body of someone perceived to be weak, pastel pink, secondary, and female.

He took a stab in the dark. "Did they punish you, for your magic?" If they'd known, her parents would've. "I was punished for mine, also."

He let this settle before going on. "You must've felt that you couldn't leave, or you would've. I'd love to know your story. I'd love to know what kept you here. You must've gone mad in this tiny room. A woman of your talents would've needed so much more space. It makes me wonder how you worked in the basement without anyone knowing."

He stopped. Something low and dull thudded. He couldn't tell if it was the floor under his feet, or the walls. It didn't sound or feel localized.

"We came here to keep people from getting hurt. We're not here to judge you. We're no saints. But we seemed to have woken up something, and we need your help restoring things the way you left it. We are asking for your help in doing that. We're asking for your permission. If you're willing… If you agree, can you communicate that to us?"

He was prepared to give it a moment, but the rap came instantly. It sounded from under the bed. Snape was on it. He held his wand aloft and crossed in front of Harry on his knees. He lit up the underside and reached as far back as he could. He pulled out shoe boxes and photo albums. Dust motes clogged the air around his wandlight, making him cough. There were storage bins and box after box of cheap romance novels. That surprised them both. Maybe her mother hadn't suspected they were there, and that's why they hadn't gotten tossed.

Harry clarified. "We're looking for a diary. I know that's personal, but it's the best tool for understanding who you were, and why you created the thing you created. We need your expression. Your language.

Another thump, and they traced it to the rows of paperbacks stuffed neatly in flat storage bins. Snape pulled them out by the handfuls. Beneath them, were three glittering and sequined books. They were diaries, all right. But old. The last one dated to when Anna must've been seventeen.

"September, 25th, 1999. Mama let me have champagne at aunt Gabriel's. Everything was going fine until Marion started whining."

He flipped ahead. October 31st. The whole congregation voted against my costume. They said it looked too real and Mama made me come home and change. No one ever said a word to Marion, who looked like a slut in that tacky Goodwill hand-me-down. Saloon floozy, my ass. Why is that cute, but my witch's gown isn't? I know why. I've got curves and green cleavage, something Marion will never have. Fuck the congregation."

He looked at Harry as if he were to blame for the juvenile words he was reading. Harry grinned.

Snape found another passage, and fixed his expression to be thoroughly unimpressed.

"December 24th. I can't sleep. I know I'm going to get that computer. Mama won't confirm, but she's got that smile on her face. She's convinced Daddy, I know it. Marion can keep her stupid TV. She has no idea what me and Janet watch when her brothers go to camp. She has no idea you can see a naked man anytime you want to-"

Snape huffed, losing interest. He snapped the book closed and tossed it on the bed. "Dead end," he decreed.

Harry, intrigued, picked it up and started flipping through the pages where he'd left off. "She was only seventeen. What else would she write?"

"I don't understand," Snape whispered, as if she couldn't hear him. "If you're speaking and she's responding, why doesn't she simply appear like all of your other ghost friends?"

He had no answer, but he had a theory. "I don't think she can. Sometimes, when a person chooses suicide, they're so overwhelmed, they dump everything. Even their power. They need time to recover, even on that side. Since there's no clock-time there, the process is entirely emotional. Years have passed here, but she could feel as weak as if she'd just done it."

Snape made a dissatisfied face and pinched the bridge of his nose. Harry could practically hear him complain of wasting time, though he didn't say it out loud.

"She's showing us her books. That's progress. That's friendliness."

"It's a trap."

Harry shushed him. "There must be a clue in here, or she wouldn't have shown them to us."

He took his time reading the stiff, acidic pages. There were no mentions of spells or magic, just complaints about her life as a shunned high school student and her sister Marion, who was always doing something to ruin things for both of them. A bothersome older sister. The statements struck Harry as obsessive, but no more so than other siblings who couldn't stop fighting with each other.

He grew a little bored and his back got tired from leaning forward on the bed. He preferred not to think about the layers of dust mite carcasses surrounding him, and hoped the wards were enough to keep them out of his hair. He saw Snape sit down in a wicker chair in the corner. He had to admit, he'd hoped for a little more.

"Anna, we appreciate your help. But was there something in particular we were supposed to find? I feel like we're missing something."

If Snape thought he was absurd for continuing to talk to the dead girl, he let no sign show of it. Quite the opposite. He watched Harry as if his own concentration could somehow contribute to the information Harry was getting.

Resisting squeamishness, Harry did a fast cleaning charm and laid back on the bed. He counted the water spots, the posters, and watched as a faint draft must've moved the purple scarf tacked above the bed. Then he saw it. An edge. A seem. A panel. It was barely visible behind the fabric, but definitely there. He got up and stood on the bed. It brought the ceiling low enough that he imagined even a young girl wouldn't have any trouble reaching it whenever she wanted to. The scarf was strategic. He pulled it, bringing the tacks holding it down with it. There was a false panel, the removable, drywall kind. Snape watched him slide it out of the way.

"I'll be damned." He stood.

Harry felt around in the darkness above his head. A smile of triumph told of what he'd found. He pulled down not just one spiral bound notebook, but two cases of them. There was also a hat box with obsolete video tapes inside. They appeared to be pornographic, and magazines showing a similar line of interest. He had Snape boost him, to see if he could find more, but it was just crawl space. It wasn't quite the attic and he couldn't fit inside.

When he had the items spread around him, they tackled the notebooks one by one. Snape took the wicker chair again, while Harry forgot his discomfort with the bed and scooted all the way against the wall, pushing the stuffed collection out of the way. They were looking for any mention of magic and spells amid Anna's normal daily life. Any sign that she acknowledged being a witch, and with any luck, the secrets behind her most enduring handiwork.

Fifteen minutes went by, before Snape dropped the notebook he was reading and reached to rub his eyes.

"Nonstop drivel about how she hated every day of her life. I am unable to torment my eyes any further. If she knew anything about magic, she's hid it well."

Harry shushed him. "She can hear you."

"No doubt, as in death, as with life, she hears nothing but her droning resentment of her sister. No wonder she never made it out of her parent's house. She couldn't focus on anything but blaming others for her unhappiness."

"Snape!"

"I feel this line of inquiry is futile. If you are truly communicating with her, she is just as impish now as she ever was. Why would she want to help us destroy her lover?"

He had a point, but Harry was reading something that might be the clue they needed. He'd been immersed in the passage before Snape interrupted him. "I may have found something. Listen to this."

'I went back down there yesterday. I couldn't help it. This is the best thing that's ever happened to me and I'm not going to let my sister ruin it. She gets everything. Surely I can have him, I'm not hurting anyone. He's perfect. Daddy would die if he found out, and I love that. I love his dark skin. He's a real man, with a perfect body. Nothing like these jokes around here. He's so strong, and still very gentle. And he likes me. I wasn't sure at first. None of Mama's spells ever worked for me. Marion says I don't have the gift, but I made the man in the pot come out, so I have it too. And he was nice to me. He likes me. I bet he likes me more than he likes her. I know that burns her up. I've named him Mikhail, like the Russian dancer. His body is so wonderful.'

Harry paused, allowing a glance of recognition between them.

Snape got it. "So the cauldron was the mother's. The girls were fighting over it. Did the mother create the spell?"

"No. Listen. 'I haven't told anyone, not even Mama. It would scare her to death. Daddy only let her keep the pot, because she said it was a valuable heirloom. It was worth money and they might have to sell it one day. He said she had to keep it out of his sight. She's told us stories, but not even she figured out how it works. All this time, she was thinking that Marion got all the special talent, when I have it too. Mikhail proves it. When I go to him, it's like the world falls away. When he touches me, that's everything. That's the only thing that matters. I don't even want a normal man anymore. I want to stay right here with him. Marion knows that, that's why she's jealous. She thought she had all the control over her precious cauldron."

Harry stopped. "Those were Marion's spells? Not Anna?"

Snape's mouth had parted, and his gaze turned inward, but he told Harry, "Keep reading."

'I bet he doesn't touch her the way he touches me. I've seen them. He likes me better. He'll… rub me as long as I want him to. His kisses down there, aren't like anything I've done with the stupid boys around here. The first time I spread my legs and he went under the water to… lick me, I knew I could never go back to any of those jerks. Nothing could feel that good without it being love. That's how I know he's good, not evil. That's how I know he loves me. All he wants to do is make me feel good. I was just playing around with guys until I found that spell. Now I have a lover. A real lover. And the spell controls him. He'll do anything for me, and Marion hates that.'

"So both sisters had a claim on this spell and this creature."

"But Anna controlled it. 'He'll do anything for me,' she said."

"What if that was merely her perception? If a spell was used to get the entity to do one's bidding, anyone could use it."

Harry shrugged. "I just feel like there was a dominant witch here. The power wasn't equal. Just the opposite."

"Read on."

"That's it. The passage ends there. " He wiped his eyes. They were tired of scanning. "I want to try something. She's not evil, just lonely and unappreciated. I think I know a way for us to get real answers from her. But it involves you asking her questions."

Snape lifted his head, as if presented with more of a challenge than the simple request seemed.

Harry folded his arms. "I want to try to go into a light trance. You ask the questions. I feel her in these notebooks. I think I can get her to speak through me."

"Are you out of your mind? You've never done that before. I wouldn't ask that of an experienced medium, not with this girl, let alone entertain the idea that you know what you're doing for a moment. Possession is very real, Harry. She was unstable in life, she may very well be in death."

"She's trying to help us. She got us these books, didn't she?"

"You got us these books. You are quite sensitive to unseen information. Do not let your compassion for her, blind you to her pettiness."

"You've got to stop talking like that. She hates it. I can feel it. We'll speed things up if you just let her talk to you, through me."

"Why are you so confident that you can channel her all of a sudden?"

"Because we're so close. And I'm so tired. She'll give you the instructions to reprogram this thing, or whatever, deactivate it, and we'll continue with the mixture. We both know it's not going to hold if her spell is still active. And I feel her. She really wants to come through."

He shook his head. "I can't have you risk it."

Harry dropped the notebook, stood, and moved closer. He had to look up at Snape. "What's the point of me being here if I'm not allowed to do what I can do? You took me on to communicate with people like her."

"Yes, but you could see them. We never agreed to letting you put your body at risk."

"I put my body at risk with every case we have. So do you. It's what we do."

There was double meaning in his words, and Snape swelled defensively. Perhaps Harry had put too much bitterness into his words. Snape gritted his teeth. "I would not have you suffer that again. I would sooner drag you from this place by the head of your hair and let the world be damned, for all I care about that disturbed girl and her potluck lover."

He was breathing hard, and Harry instantly regretted his tone. He had a lot of reasons to be angry with their situation, but not one of them had anything to do with Snape. Instead of stumbling over an explanation, he quickly moved to place a hand on the other's chest.

"I know. I know." He rubbed, as if trying to relax Snape's rising blood pressure and unforgiving stance. It was a bold move, and awkward, but no less vital repayment for the comfort Snape had given him this past week. This man let him have his bed, when he was too scared to go back to his own room. With a look, a scowl, he could've humiliated Harry into shoring up his courage and going back to his own bed, not that he would've gotten in it. And Harry remembered what he'd done to staunch the pain of physical need so overwhelming, he'd been in tears to have it end. He still couldn't bring himself to talk about that, though he knew Snape was willing. That was another mountain for another day. All he could give right now was this gesture. It was small, uncomfortable for them both, but it was sincere.

There was so much they hadn't discussed. Harry didn't know how, but he couldn't handle Snape thinking that he somehow blamed him for what happened. To compensate for all that he didn't have time to say, for all the reassurances that he didn't know how to make, he let his hand linger. He begged with his eyes. When Snape's anger was reluctant to cool, he stood on his toes and kissed the corner of his mouth. "I don't blame you for anything," he said. "Please, I have to do this."

To Harry's relief, something close to confusion took over Snape's features. Then suspicion. Then he relented.

"In ten minutes, start asking questions. "

Snape performed a second cleaning charm before he allowed Harry to lie down on the bed. He refused to sit for this, and used extra wards that Harry knew nothing about.

Harry had never tried to channel before, but he knew what a trance felt like from trying to learn meditation and self-hypnosis to cope with anxiety. It was just a state of heightened concentration, to the exclusion of all else. People entered reading trances and television trances everyday. But mention a channeling trance, and all credibility went out the window. No matter what it was called, the mind was doing the same thing. Letting go of its need to know what was going on around it, and going inside of itself. This created a link to the non-physical, and the chemical DMT switched on. Dimethyltryptamine. After he'd taught himself to relax, he found that was ninety percent of the task. The rest was just learning the signals his body gave him.

Because people had little respect for the imagination, they didn't understand that it was an interface for communication, and for everything that could not be agreed upon as fact, but was still valuable information. One had only to remember the original language. Emotion. Feeling helpless and horrified could result in dreams of bugs, to the person who feared them. Or full-blown physical infestation, if one did not catch the warning in dreams. Amatures would focus on the bugs. To fix the problem, more knowing people focused on feelings of having power over their lives and capabilities. The only thing that triumphs an emotion, is a more dominant emotion. All the action in the world, couldn't get rid of a pest, if one lived in fearful intimidation. If one felt helpless. And even then, the answer was to soothe the fear into something that felt better. That felt good. Change the feeling, and the result had to follow. Emotion was the dominant action. That was the language of imagination, and its impact on the physical world. People thrived, because they felt like they could. People died, because they felt like they had no choice.

That's how he knew he could get through to Anna. She was a fountain of emotion, and he knew how to speak that language.

Usually it took a lot longer than ten minutes to get to the state he needed to be in. But she was here, and eager. Pressure in his chest felt like thin excitement. He was sure that it wasn't his. There was nothing pleasurable about being in this place, so close to the insanity of last week. But anticipation was building, and he knew it was his link to her. He reached a point where drowsy, weightlessness offered itself. He could fight it, or he could let this conversation take place.

_I want to be awake for this_, he argued with himself.

_I need you out of the way_, she answered. _You'll censor me. Let me talk._

He felt her meaning, more than he heard her. Clinging to his most intimate ideas of love and good, he asked for protection from a God he didn't even know if he believed in. Then let go.

His mind flooded with sensations that weren't his own. This was still his room, his bed, his body, but things were different. The walls had changed color, from cream to blue. The posters were gone and a unicorn night light created a spotlight that fanned out along the wall beside the bed. It was like a stage light. All warm and ready to put on a show. He was still too excited from the county fair. He'd been given fifteen whole dollars to spend any way he wanted, and to think, Mama and Daddy were going to let him go back again tomorrow night because they were trying to make up from that big fight. He loved when they fought. It meant money and treats and everybody so eager to make the pain go away, nobody got in trouble for the next two weeks. Nobody complained about anything.

He'd gotten a new dress out of it, won two gold fishes at the fair, and got to ride the Tilt A World with Bryce Atkins. The carnival ride had thrown them so close, they couldn't part from touching if they'd wanted to. For once, his sister was out of the way. The ride would've been fun by itself, but it was extra thrilling with Bryce's hand up his dress. They knew each other from school, but he hadn't known Bryce was interested until the speed of the ride wouldn't let them separate. Not that they'd wanted to.

He lifted his leg. He was wearing a white gown. On the wall, the shadow of his leg, grew larger and more shapely than the actual leg. He liked the shadow version better. It gave him the curves of a woman. He played with it, making his ultra feminine leg dance in the spotlight on the wall. One day, he was going to have legs this beautiful for real. And money. And wear all the best clothes. He'd be so sexy, even the guys with girlfriends would secretly want him.

Snape forgot to blink as he kept his eyes on Harry. He knew something was happening when all tension left Harry's jaw and his brow smoothed over in complete relaxation. His arms spread out around him as he stretched his back like someone waking up from a great night's sleep. He smiled. It was the smile of someone who had no intention of getting out of bed and ruining such a great mood. He rubbed his face, felt the glasses, and took them off.

"Oh, he's fucking blind," the girl laughed to herself. She tossed the glasses aside, forgetting them in the next second.

Snape held his tongue while she inspected Harry's arms. She held them out and ran her hands along them, appreciating their quality, before moving along to examine the rest of him. She lifted her leg and appeared to find amusement in the shadow that it cast beside her. When she spoke, it was more to herself than anyone. For all he knew, she could've been talking to Harry.

"I was going to have the best of everything. The sexiest legs. I could lay here and let my shadow tell me how beautiful I was for hours, before drifting off. I was promised a great life."

Harry's voice took on a girl's dreamy sentimentality. Snape remembered seeing photographs of the woman on Harry's tablet, but nothing distinctive had stood out about her. Then, she'd been a victim in a series of victims. Now, he wasn't so sure.

Possession was not his specialty, but he didn't like how strongly the girl's personality pervaded the room. He was waiting on her to discover him, but she seemed preoccupied with stroking various parts of Harry's body, staring up at the ceiling like it was an old friend, and using Harry's right leg to make his shadow dance on the wall.

He would make sure she didn't get too comfortable in Harry's body. "The creature in your cauldron is killing people. Will you help us destroy it?"

No use hesitating. Either she was here to help or she was here to cause trouble.

He thought she'd been oblivious to his presence, but she turned Harry's smile onto him. "Well hello to you, too, Professor Snape."

Snape bristled. She'd known he was there. She simply didn't care. She used Harry's mouth in a more subtle way. When genuine, Harry's lips pulled his smile taut across his face, giving no thought to what it must look like to others. But hers was much more practiced and self-conscious, as if she'd rehearsed the effect she wanted it to have.

"How do you know who I am?"

"Harry knows who you are, so do I. We've met."

It took him a second to realize that she was referring to last week. No, she had no intentions of playing nice.

"Do you have access to all of his thoughts and knowledge?"

"All the stuff he's worried about. He's practically shoving it in my face." She laughed and waved Harry's hand the way someone would shoo a fly. "He's scared of me."

"Do you intend him any harm?"

She lifted Harry's head off the pillow, feigning shock. "Like I would. He's letting me use his body. Why would I hurt him? How can I hurt him? I'm not a monster, just because I'm on this side of things. Why do men have to distrust everything?"

He saw his error and tried to correct it. "If you have access to his mind, then you know very well what happened to the both of us last week. He has a reason to fear you."

She let her head hit the pillow. "Y'all were trespassing. This is all the home I've got. And besides, my man did you both a favor. You wanted that boy-pussy as much as he wanted to see you naked. You should be thanking me."

There was so much self-satisfaction in the tone she used, Snape had to stop himself from yanking Harry's body off the bed.

"No one will be thanking you for ripping privacy from their minds. You will not be rewarded for using your abilities against those who are helpless. Use your privilege to speak through Harry well. It will be short lived. He has been gracious enough to ask for your assistance, but I can assure you, I will proceed with or without your help. If you are enjoying my friend's hospitality so much, I suggest that you choose a more respectful vernacular."

Her smile faded and something sad mixed into Harry's expression. "He's here, you know. He knows what a hypocrite you are. I can show him all of your secrets, just like you saw his. Why do the so-called living think they can hide everything? Even when I was alive, I knew people were lying to themselves. That's why Daddy hated me. I embarrassed him so. He wanted to pretend he didn't sleep with other women, and he wanted everyone else to pretend with him. But I knew. Everybody always knows. If they can't prove it, they just act like it's not there. Like you.

"I didn't have a problem with my Daddy sleeping around. Just with how ashamed he was of it, and Mama acting like she didn't know. I don't let anybody get away with that shit. All my life, they made me feel horrible for being able to make myself feel good. Then they want to act like they're too good to let the sin take over. You know what hell is? It's not a place with a devil and fire. That's bullshit. It's being told that everything you love, everything that feels good, is bad and evil. And everything that feels bad, is right and good. And the whole world acts that way, and they all look at you like you're disgusting and crazy. That's hell. So yeah, me and Harry know what you want. And when he's with me, he's not afraid to give it to you. It's a fair trade. He gives me the body. I give him the balls."

While talking, she slid Harry's hands down his chest, emphasizing her point. She held contact with the distrust in Snape's eyes. Harry's hands roamed across the plain of his flat stomach and came together over his crotch.

Snape moved to grab her wrist, but she squeezed her legs together and moaned. It wasn't her moan. It was Harry's.

"Don't," he said. He was perfectly capable of slapping Harry's face in order to stop her vulgar display.

"I'll not have you abuse his body." He reached to snatch her hands away. With a twist of her wrist, she took hold of his and trapped them inside Harry's thighs. Her strength surprised him. Even Harry would not have known how to get that much cooperation from his muscles. He broke her hold, but not before having her thrust obscenely into his palm.

The small of Harry's back lifted and his pelvis shoveled to take what it could of Snape's fleeting contact. One thrust was enough to shock him. Two, enough to infuriate him, but not before the blunt detail of what he'd felt expanding inside Harry's jeans, had him stooped, open-mouthed, and backing away.

Harry's eyes watched him retreat. "Snape" he begged. "Watch me. That's all I want."

She was using Harry's voice, and Harry's allure. "I want you to see everything. I want' to give you this."

At first Harry's hands played around the bulge stretching his pants. Then she squeezed, making a hysterical sound of breathless panic. On a woman, it might've been sensual. But coming from Harry, it sounded like torment, feverish and suffering. She pulled the sounds right out of Snape's mind.

He could've inflicted a curse. Nothing so strong as an Unforgivable, but something with enough pain to make her want to leave Harry's body. The only thing that made him hesitate, was the fact that Harry would feel it too. In that hesitation, she had him. Against everything known to be decent, he watched muscles flex in Harry's arms as Harry used them to dig his way deep inside his waistband. One hand in, one hand out, the female personality used the other to wrench and twist through the fabric. It was simply everything Snape could ever hope to see of this beautiful boy pleasuring himself. It was the fantasy that even he would not allow to enter his awareness. Not even in the privacy of his mind.

Where was she finding it, if it was so sacred that he wouldn't even let himself look at it? Harry, on his back, needing something that wasn't coming, something that he let his legs fall open for and pleaded shamelessly like a child who hadn't yet learned to be afraid of what anyone thinks. The sight was far more intimate than what he'd been allowed to do to Harry a week ago. The boy's narrow hind quarters had been gift enough, and more gratifying than he ever wanted Harry to know. Better to let him think it was given in a time of need, and Harry's cries beneath him hadn't been the very blessings he prayed to hear. Harry's sexual anguish had been the healing balm of a lifetime of wounds and starvation that went too deep to expect anyone to rectify. When ecstasy traveled through Harry, his soul poured like nectar, through tremulous masculine cries. Boyish, they scraped Snape's core, where everything that really mattered, hid protected from the judgments of the world.

He could've spent himself from Harry's cries alone, yet last week, he'd had those hips tightly in hand, Harry's back curved against his chest, and was so far inside him, that he'd risked rupturing the boy's colon. And still, the sight of Harry flat on his back, cradling his arousal like it was a wound between his legs, head lolling from side to side, rendered Snape helpless in his ability to turn away. He didn't know how to stop himself from needing to see it. When Harry's hands were used to stroke himself, his body expressed every nuance of pleasure so well, so unhidden, that Snape felt those hands as well.

He understood. The girl had tremendous energy because she did not inhibit her sexuality. In a world where one is told certain things are good, and others are bad, most people live their lives in split decisions and split energy that worked against itself. But this girl was decided. She embraced her sexuality the way the sun did not apologize for spreading its rays even to people who did not want to feel them. She wracked Harry's body with orgasms no man was meant to feel. Men were projectors. All they needed, was enough boost to deliver the payload. Women readied the nest, and required extra fuel to persuade their bodies to tolerate such invasiveness. Harry's body did the best it could to ride out such turbulence. Snape ached for him. Watched, but ached.

On his back, and writhing against what his own hands were doing to him, this was a prize, a hundred times greater than Harry had already given him. This was what he wanted to see in his bed. Those flushed cheeks beneath him, being caused by him, and strain evidenced on those perfect features, giving instant feedback on what his every touch was doing to Harry. He wanted this, face to face and lost in that red mouth that couldn't hide what it felt. The girl knew what he wanted to see, and she showed him. What paralyzed him to the spot, wasn't so much what she was doing, as how she did it.

She masturbated Harry's body, less like a man would stroke himself, and more like a woman, who used her fingers to pivot all sensation to a very specific point. There were a few lengthy strokes, but she crushed Harry's genitals from the outside to get them to squeeze all of her pleasure into a triangular point that, according to her hisses and breathing, was very effective. What a man scattered, strewn widely like a net hoping to catch anything, this girl channeled to a point and brought everything into one place, where it flowed out of Harry in perfect strings of energy. The pull, lifted his torso off the bed, forcing him to bear down through each crescent breaking inside of him. There was so much of it, the denim of his pants darkened at the crotch.

Harry sounded like he couldn't breath, and Snape summoned the strength to lift his wand, to break him free of the girl's hold. But his arm rose slowly, reluctantly, and it was enough time to see Harry gulp air and thrust the last of the energy from his body. Spasms took their time subsiding. Tension, cutting a deep groove between his eyebrows, said that he needed time to recover. Snape was just happy that he was breathing again and his color was trying to return to normal. But his relief was short-lived. When Harry opened his eyes, those familiar green irises, which had spent the last decade turning up towards him, were gone. Harry's eyes were brown. Deep, disturbingly brown. The fact that she'd accessed his genetics enough to cause this effect, told Snape that she had won. Anna Karrington looked out at him from Harry's body. She smiled, her self-congratulation consumed the moment between them.

She sat up. She made sure Harry's face was wearing a lurid grin. Snape backed further away gripping his wand. He knew what he had to do.

"I thought you wanted to speak to me," she said, making Harry's voice as deceptively soft as possible. "Here I am."


	3. Guidance

He was not afraid of her. He was afraid of what he was going to have to do to Harry if she didn't cooperate.

"Call off the entity. Seal the portal. Undo whatever spell calls him forth. Or tell us how to do it."

She had a different conversation on her mind. "Did you like that? I give you a little entertainment, and you come in my house ordering me around. That doesn't seem fair."

Harry's tone yielded a southern dialect that matched his sarcastic inflection. It would've been out of place in England, but Snape recognized the American drawl from the local region, and knew that she was hard-wiring herself inside of him. He'd tried to tell Harry that anyone who could leave behind such a spell, was not going to help them.

Anna sat up. She tested the way Harry's body balanced, before walking towards Snape. Her steps were cautious, but determined.

Snape remained unbalanced by what he'd just seen, but he'd be damned before he let her smell any doubt on him.

"Witches long before you, used the entity for sex. He was created to be a plaything. You summoned him. You control him. Or you think you do. You and your sister stayed at each other's throats. When her magic proved to be strong enough to activate your cauldron, to steal your familiar, you decided to kill her. But you waited. Your choice to join him permanently in the cauldron, was a choice to be immortal. Only it didn't work. He lives on in his world, while you died, unable to join him. But you still feel his actions apart from yourself. When he touches another, you reap the benefit because your magic links you. You can only feel him when he's with another. He's your connection to the physical world, and to bodily sensation. He doesn't have human emotions, so you can't engage with him that way."

Harry smirked. The accusations were a source of pride, not shame. "Aren't you the smart one? I guess they don't call you professor for nothing." His smile was boldly flirtatious. Snape had to remind himself that it wasn't Harry. It was Anna. She advanced.

Snape had more. He'd pieced together what he could. "And before you knew any of this, you arranged for your sister's death to come after your own. You went willingly with him into the pot. But you left instructions for him to kill everyone who tried to use him, who came looking for what only belonged to you. You thought you could live in ecstasy with him forever. But where you are, you feel loneliness. You feel loss. You feel regret. He is no more there to comfort you, than you than you are in a position to heal. That's why you need victims to feel him. To feel alive. Let Harry go. He will not be your next victim. That's the only warning you'll get."

This stopped her approach. But she veered to the side and walked around Snape, like a predator who wasn't backing down, just changing tactics.

"Your boy, he's magic," she stated the obvious, and Snape realized that she wouldn't have met anyone like Harry before. She was impressed.

"I can use his body like no one else's. You've seen what I can do. Don't fight me. Let me stay with him, and I'll give you everything you want from this body. Let's choose each other. We could be good for each other. We could be family. I'd marry you, I know that's what you want. You want him by your side. Working with you, was just the beginning. I'd do that for you. I'd even let him come through and be with you sometimes. We could work out a deal."

He wasn't falling for it. "You would leech his magic like a parasite. And I would not choose family members from a source I distrusted so thoroughly. You would sooner have me dead and move on to your next meal, than find contentment in a life with me. Just because you can see into my mind, doesn't mean that you can control it. Harry, if you can hear me, fight her. She doesn't control you."

"I won't hurt him. Not if you let me stay with him. But if you won't, I'll kill him before I give him up," she snarled.

"That's why I must do this." He aimed a Crucio just as she dodged him. She knew what he'd planned to do, and did her best to outrun it. Harry's spry body threw itself through the entrance of hanging coats they'd entered. Snape took a precious second to grab Harry's wand, backpack, and glasses from the bed. He waved the coats aside and saw Harry's back racing down the hall ahead. She hadn't taken the wand, so no matter what information she had access to, that meant she had not processed the ability to use it. No matter how much power she had at her disposal, she was still an idiot and he felt perfectly justified when his next spell hit her. Harry fell the remaining way down, and rode out the agony of his pain. This time it was real pain, nothing sexual about it, and Snape's heart did not flinch to see how rough it was on Harry. He knew what Harry could take, and this was the only way to make sure she found him inhabitable. He calculated any fractures, and was prepared to put Harry's bones together one by one if he had to. If the boy survived, this had to be a lesson he would not forget. Never open your body to possession, Harry. Never.

At the foot of the stairs, he stood over the body thrashing and screaming. He waited it out. Waited, for those eyes to open, and to see what color they'd be. He knew that even if they were green, she could still be in there. She could still be lurking. He used his wand to scan Harry's pulse and other vital signs. When they appeared strong, in spite of the screaming, he struck once more with the curse of pain, just to make sure. Ideally, he would've used it while monitoring Harry's life within a minute of going into shock, and stopped. But he wouldn't make him suffer like that unless he couldn't get this girl to let go.

At his feet, Harry's cries subsided and he rolled onto his side. Without touching him, Snape rolled him back and called his name. The most unhappy line he'd ever seen on the other's mouth frowned up at him. Tears spilled from Harry's closed eyes and mucus slicked his face. He whimpered, but responded by looking up through congealed lashes. His natural eye color was back.

Snape was relieved, but distrustful. He held his wand at Harry's throat. A number of test questions came to the forefront of his mind. What were the fundamentals of building spacial wards? What were the proper staging equipment and layout for Potions Making? And the what, exactly, was the secret wizards used to choose their wands? The last being a trick question. But what he used to interrogate Harry with, was a question that could not be pulled from the stores of memories. It's answer had not been created yet, and it was something Harry had to put together on the spot. It was a question that required so much honesty, Snape would know if the answer was coming from a body-starved spirit, or the truth lying deep within Harry.

Every night since the attack that may or may not have been a dream, Snape had given his bed up to Harry. He didn't join him. He transfigured the one chair into a suitable cot and ignored Harry's apologies for his sudden burdensome codependency. He didn't want to be alone in his room and knew how childish that sounded, yet his fear was real enough to swallow his pride and accept Snape's offer to stay. Once the concern of there being absolutely no intimacy involved, was put to rest, Harry put on real pajamas and crawled into his spot like it was meant for him. The rest he took there, filled Snape with secret pride, that he, and he alone could provide a sense of safety and comfort for Harry. And every night since that first one, he remained awake while Harry drifted off under the influence of tea he hadn't known was drugged. It wasn't just a sleeping potion he drank, but elixirs that relaxed the body and promoted pleasant dreams. Two hours into sleep, he'd hear Harry say, "Wolves eat lambs. Snape kills wolves. It would be a disaster."

He'd had to hear that every night for six nights. It usually repeated. The third night it happened, he remembered where he'd heard it before. A year ago when he'd rescued Harry from the cabin. His fever had been alarming and he talked out of his mind, to people Snape couldn't see. He'd insisted, with sweat drenching his face and neck, "Wolves eat lambs. Snape kills wolves. It won't work, Dad. It's a disaster."

Anything Harry's subconscious felt the need to repeat so persistently, Harry had to be aware of it on some level. He just hoped that the other knew himself better than he let on.

He said, "You talk in your sleep. You speak of wolves eating lambs. You say it won't work. What won't work, and why will it be a disaster?"

Harry could've stared at him blankly, honestly not knowing what he was talking about. But recognition had him squirming at the end of the wand.

Snape added, "If you make up a lie, I'll know it."

Harry pressed his mouth together, worked his jaw, and took the plunge. "I don't know what it means, exactly. But sometimes, I think about us at school. I think about what you did to save us, and how poorly my dad treated you. I see all my friends alive. My parents. Sirius and Remus. It's like everyone is gathered together, just for me. For us. Everyone came back, just for this one bright, special day. Even Dumbledore. There are chairs on the castle lawn, and decorations. I'm trying to convince my dad to let things go. Let the past go.

"Everyone's worried that you'll provoke Remus. I try to tell Dad that Remus shouldn't come. It's such a big day, and if he can't make sure his friends will be nice to you, you might hurt him. I remember how you jumped in front of us, when Remus turned that night at the Shrieking Shack. In real life, that night was horrible. But when I saw you do that, I knew you really weren't a bad person. It took me years to realize what I saw. I saw your love for us that night, and I never told you. There was too much going on. You were going to attack that werewolf, or die trying.

"In my best dreams, I go back to that moment and I try to convince Dad to accept you because… because I can't have you killing Remus on our wedding day. Everyone came back just for that, and you would kill him because you've shown you're not afraid of wolves. It would be a disaster. It's just a dumb dream. I can't help what I dream. But that's what it means."

Defensiveness left Snape's mouth. The answer he'd just heard, tore through his heart like a glass weight through tissue paper. Destruction had never felt so disarming. Layer by layer, he lost his hold on the space around them, as that explanation sunk in. He lowered his wand and offered his hand.

Harry took it, pulling himself up. Snape also gave him his glasses, but held onto the wand.

"I don't know what hurts more, telling you that or the Cruciatus. Just please, don't you ever throw it back in my face. Thank you for getting her away from me, but if you ever make me feel like shit for what I just said, I'll kill you."

He waited for Harry's embarrassed hysterics to end before answering softly. "I won't." Something lit in his dark pupils, and Harry was the first to look away.

"I learned a lot," he stumbled shakily from Snape. He limped to the dusty couch and let his body fall on it. "She's still here. I have experience with that curse, she doesn't. She's weak. And pissed. And Anna's been here the whole time. Her sister suppresses her. I can see her now. She's behind your shoulder, listening. She wants to help."

He resisted the urge to lie down and Snape resisted the urge to look over his shoulder.

"What do you mean? We've been talking to Anna. She can't be trusted."  
Harry shook his head, wincing at a pulled muscles. "No, we've been talking to Marion. She tricked us. She set her sister up. When I looked at the Ministry's photos, I didn't realize how much looks would matter."

He stared around, finding exactly what he needed sitting on the television before him. It was an old model, huge, and sported rabbit ears, candle votives, and a double picture frame of both girls in their high school caps and gowns. He shot out of his seat, ignoring lingering pain, and shoved the photos in Snape's face.

"They have different fathers. They look completely different. The photo from the Ministry is Anna, but Marion is calling all the shots. No one would know that. The blond one is Anna. The brunette is Marion. We were in Anna's room, but Marion was feeding us lies. The real Anna says we need to find Marion's room."

Snape examined the photos. On the left, Anna's straight hair was a medium mixture of sandy brown, with blond highlights. She had a pudgy, baby face, with a grade-school girl's bashfulness and freckles, and appeared much younger than graduating age. Her hazel eyes were wide, betraying her excitement to the camera. In contrast, her sister's young face stared poised and made up with a veneer of artistry from the frame. Thin red lips, knew exactly what they could do to a lens. In keeping with the more popular fashions of the time, her hair stood at gelled peak, rebounding over itself in stiff waves that gave her a sculpted look. Brown eyes smiled devilishly, to compensate for lips that wanted to remain smooth and sophisticated.

Harry was holding his arm."Marion is the dominant witch. The meanest, at least. She bullied her sister. She activated the cauldron and took ownership. She had Anna killed."

As Snape listened, he noted some concern for Harry's limited movement. If they had to get out of here fast, he'd have to risk hurting him even more. He did his best to be discreet about making the wet spots on Harry's pants go away. He wondered what he remembered, but if he remembered nothing, then he certainly wasn't going to remind Harry for any cruel reason.

Harry went on, "Even if we leave alive, Anna says that Marion has tasted us. Her word, not mine. She can find us through our fear. She'll use him to come after us. She'll get stronger from our magic. He'll get stronger. There won't be anywhere they can't go. We have to destroy that cauldron."

"Whose diaries were we reading?"

"Anna's. Marion led us to them, to throw us off. Both sisters were obsessed with the cauldron. Anna was timid, she hid her thoughts. She says Marion put hers on display. She tried to make us think her sister was to blame. But I can see both of them now. Now that you've slapped her off of me. At the moment, she's not strong enough to shut her sister up. But she will be. Let's find her room."

That wasn't very hard. They'd passed the room before, and found it too sterile looking to contain anything of interest. That was before they knew they needed diaries, and before being led to the hidden bedroom. It looked too normal, too bright. It was the largest bedroom, larger even than the parents' and faced the front of the house. Light spilled in on a floral, queen-size bed, and row after row of three-ring binders lining the shelves beside it. There were books left behind, but perusal of the titles left Harry assuming they were from her college days or work related. The fact that they'd been left behind, meant they couldn't hold any valuable information, or so he'd thought.

She worked in Customer Service for a local factory, in addition to taking interior design courses, part time, at University. Her computer, if she'd had one, was no where in sight. Until fifteen minutes ago, Marion wasn't the one who had anything to do with the cauldron, other than being found drowned in it, almost a year before her sister. For some reason, Marion's death had been labeled a suicide, while Anna's went on record as an 'accidental drowning.'

Now Harry pulled the binders from the shelf with interest. The pages were filled with class notes. She was studious. Her designs were creative and showed attention to detail. Her heart was in it. He returned book after book back to the shelf, before blurting to someone Snape couldn't see.

"You said it was in here. Where?" In that same instance, Harry could've kicked himself. He saw that the entire headboard of Marion's bed was a sliding, glassed in case. It looked custom made. Inside, stood volumes of spiral notebooks. There were years worth, and they were old. Pre-laptop old. She'd treasured them. Why were they still here?

Snape watched as Harry waved his hand in front of them. That reminded him that he needed to give Harry his wand back, but still didn't feel comfortable doing so. Not with Marion on the loose, who might try to use it if she took over him again.

"Which one, Anna?" Harry moved his open hand down the length of the shelf. When he got to the right books, they pushed out, like magnets attracted to his palm. Snape worked out that this was Anna's doing. Her guidance. It inspired hope. And as one notebook pushed out farther than all the others, it inspired interest.

Anna stopped the pages when Harry started flipping them.

He read, "I poked at that dried boil in the pot until it cracked. I didn't let Anna see me hide the ring in my pocket. Even Mama said, 'Everyone leaves a part of themselves in the pot. Only the boldest ever mess with it.' Mama was scared of it. Respected it, but didn't go near it. She'd made a promise to her great aunts to never get rid of it, no matter what she told Daddy. But I found the ring stuck in all that dried goo. I inherited it, not Anna. She's no more magic than my shoe. She spied on me, watched where I hid it, and stole it."

He and Snape looked at each other, before he continued reading.

"I want it back. It doesn't stop me from conjuring my lover, but she has no right to it. Now that she's used it, she gets in the pot whenever she wants. I hate that. She saw the letters glow like I did, but she isn't smart enough to shine a light through the facets, and read all the things it can do. It shines like a ruby, and when you hold it up to the light, words shine on the wall."

He looked up, excited. "There's more to it. That stuff stuck to it. You were trying to show me something and scrape it off."

"Keep reading." Snape was not enthused. He withheld all emotion as he listened.

"The man obeys the witch who has the ring. That's what the words say. Don't ask me how I know that weird writing, because I don't. The ring makes it so that you can understand it anyway. I can even make Ricky look any way I want him too. He'll change at my instruction. I wonder if he'll do anything for me. I wonder if he'll kill my sister."

"Ricky," Harry repeated. "Anna's diary said she named him Mikhail. This is definitely Marion's journal.

"The ring explains how two muggle sisters with dormant magic, had it spontaneously awakened."

"Right. They needed a master ring. But we wouldn't need that, we already practice magic."

"We might need it. If it's possible to change his instructions to kill, then this ring unlocks that ability."

"Then we look for a ring. Where would she keep it?"

"Anna says its in the pot. We found it that same day. It's what you were trying to scrape out, only you couldn't tell what it was. She didn't know what all it could do. She thought she needed it to get it to work. She died with it on. The cauldron reclaimed it."

Snape remembered the crusty boil he first tried to remove. Harry had given him a poker to try to reach it. "I don't want you down there."

"I'm not letting you go alone."

"I'm getting you out of here. She's made her intentions known. We'll send aurors. We'll tell them what needs to be done."

He performed a shrinking charm on the remaining notebooks and threw them in Harry's backpack. They headed for the door. It slammed closed.

Harry stepped back. "I need my wand."

Snape ignored the request and blasted the door off its hinges with his own. He took Harry by the shoulder. They made it down the hall and as far as the top landing before seeing every step collapse on itself like an escalator. Only, made of wood, they broke and splintered beneath carpeting. Nails and jagged shards, long as stakes, cracked up from the floor, throwing an eruption of dust and debris into the air. The entire framework sank in on itself, leaving them without a connection to the living room below.  
"She's regaining her strength. She's down there, tracking us. She wants back inside."

"Her efforts are puny. She can't take possession at the moment, or she would've instead of resorting to this."

He turned Harry, shoving him back. "When I say jump, jump. Stay in front of me and get to the door."

Harry nodded. It wasn't a long way down, but his coordination wasn't its best after being hit with an Unforgivable. They had to get out before she brought the house down around them.

"Where's Anna?"

The question surprised Harry, who glanced down the hall and saw her standing in the door of Marion's room. She looked scared. Then she faded.

Harry only said, "She was down there. Why?"

"As long as you can see her, Marion is too weak to harm you."

He swung his leg over the railing and waited for Harry to do the same. "Land on the television."

Harry did. Candles went flying. Photos shattered. Snape followed suit and they ran for the door. No one was surprised when they couldn't open it. Harry stood back without being told to, but before Snape could speak the spell to burst it open, the floor under their feet moved. Boards popped and vibrated. They buckled up, under an invisible pressure pushing from below. Harry stepped back, closest to the door. Snape stepped away also, across from him. He didn't like the distance this disruption was putting between them, so he reached for Harry from a different direction. When he did, boards and carpet tore up into the air between them. Both were pummeled by aged planks and their lungs clogged with the grit of demolition. Both fell backwards under the impact. Huge shards stuck in the ceiling and rained plaster on their heads.

Snape was the first to sit up, shaking powdery filth from his hair. He pulled a nail out of his hand and shouted for Harry. Through the haze, Harry pushed himself up on his elbows. The front of his shirt was stained with blood. His eyes blinked, unconcerned. He threw off his glasses as if they were a nuisance, and that quick motion alarmed Snape so much more than the blood.

"Harry?"

The other smiled, brown eyes alight. "Harry who?" Marion smirked.

Snape reached for her. He had to free his legs and find his wand. Even if Marion had regained control, he needed to get Harry's body to safety. He'd worry about the rest later.

"You can't take him. I need him."

His wand lay pinned by boards. He pulled on it. Harry scrambled from his spot, racing to beat him to it. But instead of grabbing the wand, he gripped Snape's wrist.

"Don't. You'll ruin everything. I'm not evil. You asked for my help, I'm willing to help you. But I'll do it my way."

He freed his wand and drove her back. Harry's hold let go.

"What's the matter? You can destroy a whole house without touching a thing, but a little wand upsets you?"

She held her hands up. "You don't get it. He's too valuable to me. If you continue to fight me, I'll kill him. I don't want to do that. I need him just as much as you do."

The Cruciatus was on the tip of his tongue.

"I'll call off my man if you give me yours for one night. Give me one more time. You'll have a lifetime with him. Let me use this body to touch my lover one last time."

This plea, from Harry's lips, made the hair stand on his arms. It wasn't so much the request, as it was the humanity behind it. In death, as in life, this girl still had no way of soothing her ache for more than she could get her hands on. He saw her suffering. He saw the darkness she lived in, but reminded himself that that was only because she refused the light. She lived in her misunderstandings and clung to them to justify her feelings. She'd made her hell. The irony was that someone like Harry could've pulled her out. Harry would've wanted to help her. But he wasn't Harry, and he wasn't willing to bargain what he already claimed. Not where Harry was concerned.

"No."

"Ricky never hurt anyone who didn't deserve it. That didn't come around snooping. Besides, everybody gets what they want. Didn't you? You can watch."

He let the curse fly. It hurt him to see Harry turn his face against the impact and contort helplessly on the floor. But his eyes shot open and Marion continued to talk through him.

"I still enjoy people. Through him. Anna thought she put an end to me, but I got her first. She tried to steel him from me, but he only obeys me. I knew that once I had him licking her, she'd think he actually wanted her. She only thinks she got me. I may have gone first, but she was hooked. She was dead the minute she touched my cauldron. You just remember, I gave you a chance."

Snape had only let the curse take place for a few seconds, but Marion rode out the pain. She learned fast, and her endurance hinted of her growing strength as she siphoned it from Harry. She kept her eyes on Snape, baring Harry's teeth. Satisfaction glowed in her stare, and a second later, Snape understood why.

Mist seeped behind her. It rose from the floor. Thin wisps alerted Snape to what she was doing. Who she was summoning. He grabbed for Harry. White vapors rolled up from the hole fast, forcing him to decide on another bout of pain, to chase her out of Harry's body, or immediate escape. He chose escape, his hand crushing Harry's arm. Laughter came from him, even as tears of pain continued to flow.

"You're too late to save him."

He delivered an attack simply to shut her up. But darkness engulfed them both in shadow. He looked up to see a nude and well-formed man rising behind her. The man came out of the mist, out of the hole in the floor. Slick and dark as the day he and Harry first saw him, the entity from the cauldron came forth to do as he was bidden. Trunks for arms wrapped around Harry from behind. The black man's bald head reflected a glare in the haze, as he lifted Harry effortlessly. There was no fight, no struggle. And Marion used the moment to make sure Snape saw the look of contentedness on Harry's face as he was pulled to the depths below.

Snape's outstretched arm reached for him, while his wand hand hung impotently by his side. He growled and shoved the boards off of him. Vapor receded, revealing the hole in the floor and the basement beneath. He jumped in.

He landed in darkness. Nothing reflected any light, so he illuminated his wand and saw that he was in the basement. Above, a jagged hole mangled the flooring and insulation. Around him, hoards of junk confirmed where he was at. He coughed and his eyes stung from all the tiny particles hanging in the air. It affected his vision, and it took a moment to gain his sense of direction. There was no sign of the black man or Harry. Piles of disuse looked undisturbed. Once he had his bearings, he shoved his way to the hidden door. Remembering their last ordeal, he removed his boots and blasted his way inside.

Marion and her lover had already started. Harry's torso was bare and the entity held him around his waist as they faced each other in the cauldron. The darker, muscular thing actually cradled Harry, lifting his feet off the bottom and forking Harry's legs wide around his hips, the way one carried a child. Wider, heavier lips pushed his thinner ones open and chewed until Harry's mouth disappeared inside them. The entity sucked as Harry gave. Moist noises amplified in the room. Those dark, square hands rounded his ass as they held it, and persuaded his pants down, over the curve of tender, ballooning cheeks. Harry had to drop off of the pelvis he was using his thighs to cling to, to step out of his pants. When his legs emerged again, they were even more pale, wet black hairs glistening, against the darker skin that moved between them.

Sex energy hung, palpable and strong, in the air. Snape knew before he cast one spell, that it would be neutralized in the air surrounding the two. Marion might not understand spells, but with Harry's magic, her intentions were well defended. If she didn't want him getting near, he wasn't going to have an easy time of it. Harry's unguarded back, told him that she was quite confident in the upper hand she held. She wasn't worried about Snape. In fact, the more he saw, the better.

_Look at him,_ she whispered into his mind. _My man is doing everything you want to do, but don't have the guts. You only nailed him because I helped you. My man helped you both._

He got it. She was naturally strongest in this room, where her power still thrived. She and her lover didn't just pull people to their deaths. They pulled them into the pleasure. They trapped them inside the gratification that the two shared with one another. The more he saw, the more he embedded himself deeper into what the two shared. And Harry was there, suspended between their needs and his ravishment. What must he have seen a week ago?

That gratification had been unwelcomed and unavoidable. It woke violent yearning in Snape, to the point that he feared for the possibility of actually hurting Harry. He hadn't wanted to speak to the boy afterwords, not because he was ashamed, he hardly remembered what he needed to be ashamed of, but because he didn't trust himself. And Harry seemed to take it so badly. To blame himself. What followed later, when he had Harry's bed crashing into the wall, absorbing his thrusts, was something his mind didn't know how to process. That young body stretched beneath him, was the greatest aberration of his life, and he had no idea why the heavens had parted to reveal it, or what he'd done to deserve it. She did not get to take credit for that. If he never found the right words to put Harry at ease, then he would at least go to his grave knowing that such unrivaled pleasure and acceptance came to him because he was worthy of it. His sins were forgiven and he was worthy. Harry, by his side assured him of that. Harry, in his bed, exceeded that exponentially.

They were all trapped in pleasure. As he watched Harry's head fall back to the kisses placed at his throat, he felt his magic wane. The spells he cast lacked momentum enough, to get through the atmosphere surrounding the cauldron. Inappropriate swelling hung heavy between his legs and pulled his center of gravity forward. He didn't know which of the three beings offered which sensation, only that they were all feeding their hunger for greater touch and greater pleasure, to him. Harry was going to die in bliss. His body would be found unharmed. But the thing holding him, touched from the inside, and in that hidden place, he would be torn apart. He might spend an eternity trying in this house, trying to heal, long after the place was torn down. New families would come, but this moment, filled with hoards of junk, rusty cauldrons, and lonely rooms, would be his hospital forever. Or until he found the power to wake up from it. Ghosts were trapped by what they couldn't forget.

Snape summoned the will to walk towards the cauldron. With the drain on his magic, it felt like moving underwater. It wasn't fast, but it was certain. If he couldn't use spells, he'd use his body. It put him at full risk, but it was no less than what Harry was doing now. His jaw tightened, attempting to ignore how that slick, darker body moved like glycerin, in the crux of Harry's legs. Involuntary noises from Harry, fed Snape information. Information that stroked him as powerfully as Harry himself was being stroked. It told him what the entity was doing, the moment he penetrated, and his limited progress pushing up through Harry.

Marion savored it all. It was new and familiar at the same time. It was frightening and thrilling. It hurt and flooded her with Harry's endorphins. Natural painkillers eased her submission. It would've been a challenge, but her old body could've accommodated all that the entity's length asked of her. With Harry's rectum attempting to perform that same function, she had to learn rapidly, as his skin stretched. She had to outrun the pressure climbing the walls inside of her, and focus instead on nerves singing euphorically throughout his body. It was shock, and Harry's brain treated it as an emergency. A bid for survival. Nothing mattered right now, but making him feel safe, because his body was in trouble.

Snape felt pleasure, as well as taring flesh. Those bodies came up to his eye level. He watched, skin on skin, as the entity ground himself, pushing Harry's back hard against the biting rim of the pot. The boy's muscles tensed to hold on. His gasps were filled with struggle.

The ring. A ruby. The only way to stop what was being done, was to find it. Quickly. He didn't know what the thing looked like. He'd never even seen it. He raised his wand, hoping that if his only intent was a harmless search and retrieval charm, then maybe Marion's cloud of defense would not see it as a threat. Would let it through. And if she wasn't as distracted as she appeared to be, then maybe Harry's magic could assist.

He willed his need into Harry's mind. Wherever you are, please join your magic. Help me find this ring. They were linked by more than occlumency lessons. If this bitch could invade his head, then surely, he could get through to Harry.

The first attempt got him scalded, as a whirlpool rushed at him the moment his charm left his wand. The burns were only second-degree. They left him pink, but undaunted. He moved up the cement brick platform and struck again. "Help me Harry. Use my wand with me."

Harry's eyes opened. But there was nothing sane about them. From his new vantage point, Snape stood over the cauldron and saw down into it. Vapor clouded things, but he saw Harry's body enveloping the lover who was killing him, well enough. Harry's slender muscles urged the rippling sinew beneath it to grate harder, demand more, go deeper. The black man's body shimmered, all tightness and power focused to a point that he drove repeatedly into Harry.

Enough. Snape held his wand aloft and scanned the depths of the cauldron. He didn't see the entity reach around and take hold of his ankle until it was too late. He landed in the water. Panic had him regaining his footing before he found his wand. It floated, ignored by the couple, who were now only inches away from him. The water wasn't hot, as he'd been led to believe. And now that he was so close, he gave in to his instinct to thrash the demon. He wasn't foolish enough to think his strength sufficient, so he used his magic to send one of the wooden chairs hurdling at the entity's head. He ducked, making sure it missed Harry. The chair had been left over from stacking objects to test the integrity of the cauldron's bottom. As expected, the chair broke against the entity, who's disinterest considered it a mild distraction, as he continued to ride Harry.

Furious, Snape had the presence of mind to realize that his magic worked inside the cauldron, when it worked no where else in the room. He too, was in the eye of the storm, the center of Marion's magic, and was sheathed by it. His next thought was to Crucio them both, but Marion was on to him. Harry released his lover. The entity turned to face Snape, his face impassive. His hand, large and dripping, came up to press the curse back into Snape's lips. It was like having his magic clogged in his mouth, but was nothing compared to having the dark man follow that with his tongue. Snape choked on all that filled him. Slipping thickness went where it wanted inside his mouth. He couldn't keep it out, and he couldn't keep his own arousal from shooting signals up his spine.

She must've done it out of spite. She must've done it out of amusement. Every molecule of liquid rushed forward in him. Water seeking water, that gripping mouth summoned it up through him. It pulled on his veins until it triggered the release of all control. It pulled seminal fluid from their reserves so forcefully, he could only wince as he felt his body push it out. Contact ended abruptly, leaving him bent, bruised, and treading water. His wand floated by his face. Harry's fingers reached it before he did.

He was so weak, he saw the spell coming, and could not move out of its path. He knew she'd fuck it up, she not being Harry. And that made it all the more dangerous. His mind didn't record the spell that hit him, only the intend. She wanted him gone, blasted far from her and her time with her lover. The brain doesn't record speed like that. Either it is filed as trauma, or not at all. He lay on the other side of the room, half off the bench-like pew, half on. He was sure his ribs were broken, but he was alive, and Harry's moans echoed off the walls. He heard ecstasy, but he also heard pain. He couldn't push himself up. There was too much going on, internally. He couldn't allocate any extra strength to his muscles.

With closed eyes, he asked for Harry. He asked for Harry to know that he was sorry. He asked for help, for Harry.

Then he saw her. He might've blinked, closed his eyes on his pain for a moment, but she was standing there plain as day. Anna. Her average hair hung straight and unadorned. Her freckles crowded around her hazel eyes, in deep curiosity. She wore jeans with holes that were considered fashionable, and an over sized, pink jersey. Her hand extended. She hesitated before touching his cheek. In that connection, he understood her, and she him.

The death process was fascinating, even to those who'd already done it. She felt sorry for him, but she didn't know how to save him. She was prepared to wait it out. She wouldn't let him suffer alone. She herself, could use someone else to talk to, besides her sister. He thanked her, but that wasn't what he needed right now. He used his mind to show her what he needed.

She had no experience with the process, but she was willing to give it a try. No one ever expected much of her, so it was kind of thrilling to be asked. He felt her giddiness wash through her.

When he pushed himself up on shaking arms, he was not alone. His body was broken, but as long as Anna stayed just outside the pain, she got it to move. It was her lack of commitment to it, that ignored its impairment. He was too hard-wired to his internal organs to ignore their cry for help. Between his magic, and her desire to help, his body stood upright and walked. He came forward. He didn't need to get too close to the cauldron, in order to do what needed doing. The second easiest thing to do with wandless magic, is to summon one's wand. The first, is to summon a broom, which every eleven year-old masters right away. When he demanded the wand from where Harry had dropped it, it came.

Anna showed him where the ring was. It burned in her mind, and he understood that its magic was hidden beneath char and jet black residue. As one, they went closer. He knew that any defensive strike would have the cauldron lashing out at him, so he followed her mind. He knew what she knew. His bare feet remained flat on the floor, but his vision was airborne, and dove with Anna, back into the eye of the storm. That is, she showed him the pot from above, the busy couple, and dove right past them to where the ring lay stuck, encrusted, and hidden. From where he stood, he used his wand to pry it out. With her guidance, he freed it. It shot from the water and arched over the length of the room, into his hand.

She flashed what she knew into his mind, and he read those pictures like instructions. At the same time, he felt Harry's endurance give out. That sexual menage was about to lose one member, just as Marion had planned. Harry's injuries were driving him out. His exhaustion loosened his claim. His body shuddered its last shudder.

Snape slipped on the ring and held his wand to it. The dark man ceased all of his actions. He let go of Harry's body.

Unaware of this, Snape sent prismatic light through the ring, forcing it to reveal its secrets. Red markings projected outward. He turned so that the wall served as a backdrop. They read, ONLY A LOVER CAN SERVE THE OTHER. HE IS A GOD OF PLEASURE. HE OBEYS THE RING. PUT IT ON. NAME THREE THINGS.

He understood. This was no spirit. This was a genie, stuck in a cauldron instead of a lamp. Enslaved to it. The stupid girl probably wasted her wishes on perfecting its appearance and asking it to murder people. She admitted to telling it to kill everyone who tried to take her place. Her first wish must've been for it to be the lover of her dreams, forever. The script was another code, written by a discreet witch. Perhaps that had been a mortal man once, until he pissed the wrong woman off.

Only a lover can serve the other. That meant sex. When it came to magic, energy was like currency. One had to be willing to put out. To a modest person, that would've been the most serious, deepest investment they could make to seal a deal, to get a magical job done.

He is a god of pleasure. His powers thrive in servitude, but they are granted from a higher dimension.

He obeys the ring. Obvious. The ring is a control panel.

Name three things. That didn't translate into three wishes, precisely.

He looked at Harry, whose head lolled against the rim. The hard part was already done. Harry had been forced to become a lover. His magic was fully invested. It was certainly more invested that his Snape's.

In the process of examining the ring, he hadn't noticed the entity stopping and staring straight ahead at him. Waiting.

Anna showed him Harry's state. Eyes closed, he drifted further away from his body. Outwardly, his limbs floated. He sank. Marion could no more animate a dead body than she could rise in her own. She'd wanted one more night with her lover. She'd gotten it. At Harry's expense.

Snape advanced. His movements jerked, but Anna's strength got him to the cauldron. Either Marion and her pet were so enthralled, so powerful, that neither saw him as a relevant threat anymore, or Harry's life was too far gone to matter to either of them.

The entity stood stock still. It did nothing to interfere as Snape climbed the platform again. He couldn't get into the cauldron fast enough, so he commanded to the entity. "Pick him up. Save him."

Without a hint of resistance, the entity bent, retrieving Harry's body, and bringing it up to the surface. As it held the boy out to him, Snape looked for any sign of compassion or regret. He found none, only obedience. If he could've he would've wrestled Harry from those arms, but he needed the entity's strength. He took the ring off and wasted no time putting it on Harry's hand.

"Anna, call him back. Tell him he can come back. Just long enough to say the words."

He bent to Harry's face. Resuscitation was his next option, and he used magic to pull water from Harry's lungs, before filling them with his own oxygen. He put so much of himself into it, that Anna withdrew, but stayed close. He turned to the entity.

"Help him. Bring him back."

The ring had said nothing about giving life, and the entity's stare was unhelpful. Snape grasped Harry's cheeks in both hands and thrust heated anger into his face.

"You ridiculous, tragic boy, you listen to me. I did not risk my life through servitude, following the orders of asses, survive a war, finally reach a life where I can be seen enjoying your company in public, only to have you die in my arms here today. Not even my pathetic arms, but his. You deserve to wake up, curse this unfortunate soul to hell, and walk out of this place with me. So help me, Harry Potter, if you die, I will summon this bastard back just to kill me in the same absurd manner, and come after you. It wouldn't be the first time I followed you into death. I'll do it."

His tears dripped onto Harry's face. He kissed his mouth.

"If you don't come back, I'll tell everyone we know about your dreams. About how you want to marry me, ugly old Snape. Of course no one will believe me, but I'll have my memories digitally recorded and they can see for themselves. I'll sell them like books. Let the lot of your friends turn green. You're not a child anymore. You never were. You didn't have that luxury, did you? Adults sacrificed you, and threw your childhood away before you ever reached my door, Potter. I've known you for fifteen years now. I've seen the worst of you, and the best of you. You've seen all my secrets. If you bloody-well want to marry me, then goddamn it, make it known. I'm not too proud to have you. In fact, I'd be bloody honored."

The longer he talked, the more he realized that Harry wasn't responding. He looked for Anna through the film covering his vision. He barely saw her. She stood outside the cauldron, at eye-level with him. Her entire body language, as ephemeral as it was, told him that she was sorry for his loss. Sorry they weren't fast enough. She had a small build and her height struck him. It was significant. She wasn't that tall. Even he had needed to climb the platform. He peered over the cauldron. She was floating. Her feet didn't touch the ground.

He jumped, fully realizing his mistake. Harry had discovered it that first time. The vapor and water conducted energy through a portal. As long as Harry lay in it, he wasn't in the world he was supposed to be in. If out long enough, his spirit might consider it to be dead. He looked up at the entity.

"I don't trust you to set foot in our world ever again." He took the ring from Harry's hand and put it back on. Grimm acing, he lifted him out of the entity's arms and struggled to get Harry over the side of the cauldron. He dumped him, as delicately as he could, onto the blocks. His own body spasmed in pain. When he succeeded in throwing a leg over and lowering next to Harry, his gut locked, restricting his movements. Anna helped where she could. He was too emotionally invested to let her take over his motor skills. Harry on the blocks, was good. But Harry on the floor, closer to the earth, was better.

He ignored the blood trail he left and drug Harry to lie on the carpet. He winced, pulling his jacket from his body, so that he could cover Harry's nudity. Just to make sure, he bent his knees and positioned the heels of his feet to where they touched flat on the ground. Then he took the ring off and slipped onto Harry's finger. It didn't fit, so he held it on, balling the hand into a fist.

"He's yours now. Send this bastard back to hell."

Nothing happened right away, and Snape stopped talking. He put his head on Harry's chest, to say his real good-bye. "I hope that you can see me. I hope that nothing is hidden from you. Please know everything I've ever felt about you. This world is not worth the secrets that chain us so."

He was still talking when Harry's hand brushed his hair. A tickle at his temple alerted him. He pulled back, and saw his favorite color in the whole world. Green. Harry's eyes were rimmed in red. The whites were filled with broken blood vessels. His pupils were dilated, but they focused on him, and that was all he needed to see.

Weak and half conscious, Harry did his best to speak the words Snape wanted him to speak. He didn't know how the entity disappeared. He only knew that when Snape said, "You have to want this as much as I do," he wanted to want it that much. He trusted the man holding him, and spoke every word. His body slipped in and out of awareness through healing charms that got them both back to the car. Later, he would learn that Snape sent for doctors and had him set aright before going back to the house with aurors and sealing the cauldron. Once sealed, without the ring, it was just an ordinary pot and they were able to reduce it to ashes with demolition charms. The ring was handed over to the Dark Artifacts Department, to see how it could be safely destroyed as well. The case was closed.

Harry stretched long and hard under the covers. The sound of birds and far away traffic, eased him gently into the waking world. Sunlight glowed, reflecting off of white sheets. An earthy scent of tea wafted on a table near his head. Waking up in his own bed, was the best part about being back in England. Technically, it wasn't his bed. But it was going to be. That scared him a little, but then he thought about all he'd been through.

"You've got this, Harry," he mumbled into his pillow. His eyes were hardly open, and already he needed a pep talk.

He'd had the dream again. This time, the wolf sat on one side of the lawn, while Snape agreed to stay on the other. Snarling was at a minimum, and his dad told him that he loved him. Such dreams made him wish he didn't have to leave them. He felt everything. The colors people wore, their laughter, and even the way it felt to be in that space. They made him sleep longer, and that made him feel lazy.

"You've got what?" Snape's bottomless voice resonated beside him.

Harry threw out his arm and reached for the presence that was always there these days, to take his side whether he agreed or not, and make him feel better.

"Nothing. The dream again. I feel good, but useless." He pushed over onto his back and scooted closer to Snape. "We need another case. I'm getting lazy."

Snape was fully dressed, no surprise there. His legs stretched atop the covers and he used a charmed towel under his boots to make sure they didn't touch the sheets. Harry leaned into his shoulder and marveled at how right it felt. A year ago, such a thing would've seemed impossible. Now, it was life the way he needed it to be. The way he deserved it.

"You're not lazy," Snape sipped while reading his schedule. He laid it down and brought his arm around Harry's head. That let his thumb stroke the bare shoulder offered to him. "Sleep is highly therapeutic."

He kissed the top of Harry's head.

Harry had gotten Snape to repeat these words as often as he could during the past two months. The more he complained, the more he realized he was really seeing how many head kisses and rants of support he could get. Being the center of another person's love, was actually quite addictive. Outside Snape's home, the world knew a different man. But inside, Harry was lavished with stringent affection. He was beginning to let himself be spoiled by it.

"You do more work in the dream state," Snape answered, "than you can possibly do with your physical body. That's why your brain releases the necessary chemicals to temporarily paralyze your limbs. For your own safety."

Instead of calling him an insufferable know-it-all, Harry let it slide and asked,"What kind of work?" The back of his hand trailed Snape's chest hair. He really didn't care what kind of work. He just wanted to stay wrapped in that voice. This had become the extent of their Saturday morning lie-ins.

"Like arranging our wedding, for one. You can't bring our loved ones back, but you're still invested in the seating arrangements and making sure everything goes off without a hitch. Your father's love is just as important to you as mine, so you won't set a date until his friends can sit in my company, in peace. With every dream, one little detail changes. That's your beliefs making progress. Making a way where there seems to be none. That's not to mention all the rescues you perform nightly, and your assistance helping the dead cross over. Anna says you're all over the place. You're like a supernatural Emergency Worker. You live for it. That bombing on the news last week. You were there, rushing people down stairwells. You do what you can."

It was a nice thought, but Harry wasn't buying it. "How do people not be overcome with sorrow, with jobs like that? I couldn't do that every night. I'd be so depressed."

"Ambulance drivers do it all the time. I hear it's rewarding. And Anna tells me that it no longer depresses you. Now that you truly know the living and the dead are only separated by viewpoints, you don't mind tragedy. You'll never believe that anything is that final or lost from you, ever again. Your father reminds you as often as he can."

"Mmm, I'm so glad she made it out of there. She's a nice person."

"She is a lovely person. I wish she could help us full time."

"The job is hers if she wants it. We can't blame her for focusing on her sister's recovery."

"But those are just dreams. All that rescue stuff. The wedding. As long as they have no effect in the real world, nobody is going to agree that I'm getting very much done. I'm not so sure love is good for me. I've become lazy. I don't want to go backwards. I don't want to use it as an escape."

"You won't. You're not going backwards. You've simply become convinced to let a lot of healing take place. For that, your ego needs to be out of the way. Sleeping during tremendous life change, is normal. Don't listen to muggle doctors." He kissed the top of Harry's head again. That was two in four minutes. Today was going to be a good day.

"Let it happen. Let all the things you no longer care for, drift out of focus. Minding them, is what keeps people in turmoil anyway. Sleep as late as you want. I'll watch for any wolves at the door."

Harry smiled at his phrasing. Deliberate or not, he loved that he had someone to rest his head on. And not just someone, but the most extraordinary man he knew. There was no wondering what this wizard was made of. He knew. With his dying breath, Snape had saved everyone he could. That's what he was made of, and calling him his, made Harry the happiest person on Earth.

Did it bother him, that they still didn't have sex like other couples? A little. But the fact that he wasn't ready to revisit sex, didn't make their relationship any less intimate. And it was magic, that any man would stick so close to him, without the reward of intercourse to cushion the deal. Because Snape wouldn't touch him, made him move closer in the bed they shared. Because Snape never let decorum slip, and was rather old fashioned about things like dating, or what he called "courtship," got Harry on his lap, on their third official date.

When he realized that Snape wasn't going to lift a finger to upset him during this phase of their relationship, he began to abuse his power. His hands explored freely, but if Snape showed any interest in touching him, feelings would overwhelm him. Harry thought he might lose him this way, until the night he figured out there was more than one way to please a man. He supposed he'd always known, just never trusted himself to try it with anyone. And now that he could, he didn't feel that sex was missing from his life at all. No, they didn't do it like most people. Clothes were usually on, lights off, and a lot of patience required on Snape's part. But it worked for them. He loved knowing that the day was fast approaching when he'd feel ready to let Snape inside him again. He'd almost suggested they try it, the last two times. But he didn't want to say anything until he was sure he could go through with it.

For now, it was enough to lie in Snape's arms and think about the possibilities. And maybe take a nap.


End file.
